


Carrying Dangerous Goods

by novembersmith



Category: Generation Kill, Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Crossover, Dragons, F/M, Forced Orgasm, M/M, Mild Kink, Pining, Podfic Available, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-18 00:03:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/pseuds/novembersmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the Signal Code of the Royal Navy and His Majesty's Aerial Corps: B, or Bravo -- I am taking in, or discharging, or carrying dangerous goods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softlyforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyforgotten/gifts).



> This is a story about Ray and Brad growing up together. Also, there are dragons.
> 
> ...
> 
> ....okay, so basically I shoved the GK boys into 19th century Napoleonic England, added Naomi Novik's dragons, shook vigorously, and then ~~RAN LIKE THE HELL~~ hoped for the best. I tried to keep the dialogue as true to the characters AND to the period as possible, with mixed success. The occasional anachronism is definitely present. There are no spoilers for the Generation Kill series within; there ARE for the Temeraire universe, however, particularly the third book, _Black Powder War_ , though most of the events of the books happen outside the parameters of this fic.
> 
> Also, now is the time I heap thanks on a billion people. Tons of you have read snippets and sometimes the entire shebang, and were utterly fantastic, and much thanks to you all, but I'd like to specifically thank laliandra, brimtoast, and shiningartifact. laliandra  was a total darling and agreed to help me brit-pick this monster, despite having no idea who any of the GK boys are. I heart her forever. brimtoast, beta extraordinaire, who pointed out numerous typographical and pacing issues, and poked me until I elaborated on both plot and porn. Thank you for your pithy, insightful comments, as ever, bbdoll. And shiningartifact, who held my hand every step of the way and convinced me this wasn't all a load of total twaddle, and was a fantastic beta besides. I cannot thank any of them enough.
> 
> ALSO:  AWESOME podfic by dodificus [here](http://amplificathon.dreamwidth.org/224739.html)! :DDDDD

_Dover, September 1797_

Ray meets the new boy at the worst possible time. He's gotten himself completely tangled in Laetificat's harness and is hanging upside down, cursing and laughing at himself as the blood rushes to his head, and then he hears someone clear their throat.

"Oh, no you don’t, Rudy," Ray calls, wagging a finger in the air warningly. "Time's not up yet, I've almost got this. Your pudding will be mine." He just needs another three minutes and he'll totally have won the bet, he knows it.

There's a short silence filled with the low rumbling conversation of dragons and the hiss of steam, and then a voice speaks up, and it isn't Rudy:

"I was told to ask Ensign Person where to stow my belongings."

Ray doesn't recognize the voice, which isn't unusual; dragons come and go in the Dover covert fairly regularly, and there's always a flurry of new officers and ensigns when they do. But it's a young voice, dripping an upper class accent all over the stone ground, and Ray is abruptly curious. He maneuvers so he can swing himself around and there's the kid, twenty feet below him. He looks about Ray's age--okay, maybe a bit older, closer to thirteen--the guy's definitely taller than Ray is, anyway, and he's got blue eyes, wow. Blue blue blue, and bright pale hair like frost.

"Hi," Ray says dizzily.

The boy blinks up at him, looking suddenly uncertain. Even upside down, Ray can see he's upset, tight mouth and white knuckles on his bag. They don't usually get lads his age turning up in the Corps—the nobles don't send their sons to join up as officers until they're sixteen or more, and the poor families like Ray’s that can't afford to feed extra mouths, they all ship their kids off by the time they’re eight years old.

Ray tilts his head, takes in the bright glint of brass on the kid's boots, the finely enameled trunk. There's a story here, a story behind this boy with the sharp blue eyes, and Ray is curious. He only has another four or five minutes to undo this crazy knot of hellfire and harness that McGraw had created that morning or he loses tonight's pudding to Pappy and Rudy. But... what the hell. Ray will just wheedle an extra share out of the kitchens later. He's still pretty scrawny and the cooks always fold if he widens his eyes pleadingly at them.

"So you're joining up?" he calls down, and begins fighting to get his left arm free. "Hey, they didn't tell me we were getting anyone new." Typical, Ray's always the last to know, even if he's apparently been assigned welcoming duty. Such is his lot in life. "Well, anyway, yes. I'm Ensign Raymond Person, but you can call me Ray, and I'll get you squared away in two jiffs. Three jiffs." He smiles winningly. He's pretty sure his face is tomato-red by now. "I'm almost done up here."

"Bradley Colbert," the boy says stiffly, nodding. He forebears to comment on how many jiffs it will actually take Ray to get down, or what a jiff is, even, so Ray likes him already. "I just got in from London."

"Huh, London. Wow." Ray remembers what it was like when he'd first got to Dover, seven years old, a sniveling little runt. Miserable, that's what it'd been. He's never been to London, but he figures leaving has to be hard no matter where you're leaving from. Maybe it's even harder when you're older, getting dumped out of a life of luxury into a pack of bumblers like McGraw and Sixta, everybody knowing each other and no one knowing you. Plus, Ray barely remembers a life without dragons in it, and this Bradley kid's probably never even seen them before, not in London.

Ray imagines London’s a lot like Dover, only grayer, stretched and pulled like taffy, the steeples and chimneys scraping the sky and leaving no space for color and wings. But it's not like he knows for sure. Maybe London's got lots of color, lots of dragons. Maybe Brad can tell him about it, about the tall buildings and streets and people. Maybe Brad's met the Queen.

Ray's pondering this and not paying attention, and his hand slips. Suddenly he's chewing a faceful of harness and it tastes _horrible_. He spits out a scrap of burnt leather and grimaces. "Ugh, tastes like a boot that went up Satan's arse."

There's the slightest hint of a smile on the boy's face, now. Ray's never needed very much encouragement, so he hams it up, rubs at his face with the back of his hand and swoons like he's dying.

"Wow," Brad observes dryly, cocking an eyebrow. "So, to whom does this boot belong? Or is there just an ownerless boot lodged in the Devil's backside?"

Ray feels his heart do something weird, like it's flopped over sideways or something and now he can't breathe right. Sometimes he kind of thinks maybe Pappy and Espera and the others get tired of him, is all. Ray can't stop talking, or moving, or thinking, he just can't, and then the others snap and throw things at him or make a bet that gets him out of their hair for a while. Ray goes with it. But maybe this new kid won't mind all the talking so much. He's smiling up at Ray, a strange, tiny smile that Ray likes immensely.

"I'll tell you who the boot belongs to," Ray says, and positions himself so his head no longer points directly at the ground. "One of our lieutenants tied this bloody harness into his own belt this morning, and then fell off the side and took two of our riflemen with him, _and_ he actually fired off a damned shot! Can you believe it? He could have hit anybody, he's just lucky it backfired and set flame to his coat instead. So he starts flapping around and everyone gets tangled together in a giant fiery mess, it was hilarious! You should have seen it; you picked the wrong time of day to join up. Anyway, now the whole left side of the harness is, as you can see, snarled to hell and back, but I might be able to salvage some of it. Then the groundsmen can patch it up and use it on one of the lightweights. If it's done before dinner, Pappy and Rudy owe me their puddings," he finishes in a rush. He'd waved around an arm to illustrate McGraw's flapping, and now he's swinging back and forth gently in the breeze. It's fun, in a nauseating kind of way, so he kicks his legs to get a bit more momentum.

Brad's staring at him, blinking. "How do you get air when you do talk?" he inquires finally. "Do you have an extra set of lungs?"

"I just get more words out of one breath than other people, I suppose." He shrugs cheerfully, and then yelps as a knot unexpectedly slips loose and he faceplants amongst the coils again. His curses are muffled, and Brad laughs. Even as Ray flails uncomfortably, he feels a rush of triumph.

"Well," Brad says, setting down his bag and rolling up his sleeves. "I have to say, Raymond, chewing the knot loose doesn't seem like the best tactic. I'll be down here waiting for you all night, and neither of us will get pudding."

"Hey," Ray says, beaming. Brad is surprisingly quick-handed, swarming up the unmangled parts of the harness with ease, and then he's hanging next to Ray, cocking his head and regarding the mess of knots coolly. "I'll have you know this crap was way worse an hour ago, wasn't it, Laet?"

The giant scarlet head cranes around and inspects the cocoon of boy and knotted leather. Next to him, Brad has gone perfectly still. Maybe he's never talked to a dragon before, Ray thinks. And even if he has, it probably wasn't a Regal Copper like Laetificat. Laetificat's enormous, bigger than houses—probably bigger than that castle in London, even. And her teeth are fantastic, most of them the size of Ray himself. Which, okay, isn't saying much for a thirteen year old, but it's pretty big for a tooth.

"It was a much larger knot before," Laetificat says, and Ray grins and punches the air victoriously with his free arm. "You've done quite well, Ray. Though I do think Captain Portland would disapprove of your language."

"Aww," Ray says, and manages to extricate his arm and thread another of the harness loops free. "Hey, Laet, have you met Brad yet? He's our new cadet, isn't he great? He's going to help me with this mess."

"Pleasure to meet you, my lady," Brad says politely, and Laet huffs out a rumbling laugh.

"My lady," Ray chortles, and nearly asphyxiates himself before Brad rolls his eyes and hauls him free of the make-shift noose he'd created himself. "You'll fit in great."

"I can't tell you how much it heartens me to have your esteem, Raymond," Brad replies, making a face at him, and oh man, Ray is totally going to make sure Brad gets the bunk next to his.

The two of them actually do make quick work of the knot, and when they go in to dinner, Ray splits his honorably won extra helping of custard with Brad and manfully resists the urge to stick his tongue out at Rudy and Pappy.

***

Brad, as it turns out, is good at _everything_. He has about a week where he's a little unsteady in the air, wide-eyed and sticking close to Ray, but after that, he's gold, and everyone knows it. He's only been here a few months, but he's got all the instructors completely besotted, falling over themselves. Even when Brad doesn't know the difference between a double bowline knot and a carrick bend, he's got a way of cocking an eyebrow and drawling that makes it _sound_ like he does, and anyway, he figures out the right of things soon enough. He's bloody quick, learns all the knots and flags and signals in the first two weeks, practices them every night by candlelight until he’s gotten them all memorized.

Ray would hate him, but it's kind of a little bit impossible. All the cadets and ensigns jostle around him, trying to get his attention, but Brad for some reason sticks to Ray's side, draws him into conversations, wants him around. He doesn't mind that Ray's the shortest, scrawniest ensign in the covert. He doesn't mind that Ray's obnoxious, that Ray can't ever seem to rein in his tongue. Brad just talks right back, educated and drawling and completely, utterly vulgar. It cracks Ray up, hearing those circumlocutious epithets coming out of that proper, upright face.

When Ray can't stand still and jiggles his foot or makes up outlandish songs about their dinner menu and Captain Moore's beard, Brad nods solemnly and hums along for the chorus, or beats a sedate accompanying beat against the table. He makes it easier to be still, to be quiet, to let a comfortable silence grow between them. It's amazing how much Brad steadies Ray. Even Captain Portland comments on it, says maybe that Person has the discipline to make an officer of himself yet.

Sometimes Brad gets this cold, distant look, though. Early mornings, right before drills, on the few occasions Brad gets an answer slightly wrong. Ray doesn't like it. He knows Brad is happy to be here most of the time, knows Brad's surprised by how much he likes it here in the Corps—he doesn't know if _Brad_ knows Ray knows that, though. Brad's a private sort of fellow; he talks a lot, but never about himself. Ray doesn't want to scare him off, but not knowing exactly what's wrong is making him _itch_.

He doesn't think that Brad ran away from home, but it's a possibility. Maybe he was disowned, but Ray can't quite imagine anyone wanting to disown Bradley Colbert, for any reason. Maybe his family defected to France and Brad's standing up for his country. Maybe he's an undercover agent of the Crown, or... Ray doesn't know why Brad's here, but he spends a probably unhealthy amount of time stewing over the possibilities. He should just ask, but he's trying to be patient for once in his life. It's something of an experiment.

So for now, when Brad gets that brittle look on his face, Ray's just extra loud and stirs up trouble with his instructors, or is deliberately terrible at his penmanship. Brad's distracted from whatever awful judgment he thinks is going to fall on him from above by his need to mock Ray into being a better person, pardon his pun (which Ray never does). Ray's already gotten a way better grasp of Greek and Roman history than he'd ever thought possible, just from the insults Brad's cheerfully thrown his way.

Brad's brilliant and going to make the Youngest Captain Ever—it's completely obvious to everyone else, but for some reason Brad doesn't seem to realize it. For Christ's sake, he's stressing out about making bloody _ensign_.

Even aside from Brad having all the instructors and most of the captains wrapped around his little finger, that is beyond utterly ridiculous. Ray's got a sweet inside connection with Laetificat. Brad has _nothing_ to worry about.

"All the dragons love me," Ray tells Brad grandly as he flashes the tiny make-shift signal flags that he'd fashioned out of leftover sheets and colored rags. It's midnight and they're huddled together in Brad's bunk, sharing a pilfered bag of biscuits. Ray knows he’s spraying Brad with crumbs as he talks, but Brad’s taking it remarkably well.

Well, and he _should_ , since it’s his fault they’re both awake. He'd been keeping Ray up with his nervous staring-at-the-ceiling-and-fretting stillness. Normally Brad just flopped into bed and snuffled about and then fell asleep easily, so his sudden impersonation of a dead body had given Ray a creepy-crawling sensation. He’d finally snapped and sat straight up in bed, hissed ‘Why the hell are you still awake, Colbert? Jesus.’ And then had had the pleasure of seeing Brad startle and nearly fall out of the bed with shock. Sweet revenge, even if it hadn’t lasted long.

Now instead of sleeping, they're studying signal flag patterns.

Again.

"I mean, look at me, I'm irresistible. Who can blame them," Ray continues, trying to remember to whisper. "So you can get any position you want, so long as the position you want is on Laetificat. Why you'd want to be on any other dragon's beyond me, to be honest. Laet's going to see all the best battles. She's the best heavyweight in the Corps." Ray wrinkles his nose in thought. "Well, Excidium's pretty smashing too, I suppose. He can spit acid and all, but you should still stick with me and Laet. I mean, acid, I dunno, have you seen what that stuff can do? Bloody creepy if you ask me. First time I saw him take out a cow with it I couldn't sleep for weeks."

Brad narrows his eyes at the flags for about half a second and then answers decisively. "'Enemy above, prepare for boarding,'" he translates, correctly, of course. He's always correct, the tosser. Then he steals the last biscuit as he says meditatively, "The dragons all know you because you corner them and jabber at them for hours on end while they're trying to sleep. That they 'love you' seems a bit strong, Ray."

Oooh, just for that, Ray's going to give him a bloody hard one. He scrunches his mouth in thought, and then grins triumphantly and throws out a complex pattern of blue and red. Brad blinks, and Ray says, "Hah!" triumphantly. Then lowers his voice because he doesn't want Lenton to drag him out by the ear and make him sleep in the tack room again. And anyway, it's not jabbering, it's _making conversation_. Ray decides he should point this out. Brad might be a genius, but he's occasionally massively socially inept. That's okay. That's what he has Ray for.

"They like talking to me! Well, when they’re not sleeping. And that Torrentio is a real prick, he doesn’t count, no one likes to talk to him. But the Winchesters have _all_ the best gossip," he informs Brad in a whisper, and they do. Ray knows more about the War effort in the Mediterranean than most of the officers, thanks to them. He got a demerit a few months ago for correcting McGraw in the middle of one of his damn lectures on innate British superiority: he'd said the British had won a maneuver in Sardinia that Ray _knew_ they'd lost, and badly. It'd been worth the demerit to see the bastard splutter. "Winchesters are the best for up-to-date information, being couriers and all," he tells Brad importantly, and he's giving away his best sources, sure, but he doesn't mind. His sources are Brad's sources. "But all the dragons like to be talked to, they've always got things to say.”

"So do you," Brad mutters, still frowning. “‘New French formation of heavyweights to spotted south-southwest. Shift to Longwing formation, with Regal Copper to upper left quadrant’?” he asks uncertainly, and Ray shrugs.

“Almost,” he says, and blinks when Brad hisses out a curse. “No, really, you almost got it. Should have been lower right quadrant, but that was a fucking hard one. I was kind of being a tosser with that. Usually we don’t get long strings of signals like that all in a row, you know?”

“I missed the figure-eight pattern,” Brad murmurs to himself, fists clenched so tightly the bones show whitely through the skin. “Fuck, that was it. The figure-eight instead of the double loop.”

Ray bites his lip, and, after dithering a moment, reaches out and knocks his fist against Brad’s hand, hopes it’ll smooth it out before Brad cracks a knuckle or something.

“Hey, it’s fine,” he says, eyes wide and trying to catch Brad’s eyes. “What, who do you think here’s going to care? Me? Fuck, no. That’s why we’re practicing, right?”

“I have to be good at this,” Brad says uncertainly, but his hands are relaxing, and Ray grins, punches Brad in the shoulder and picks back up the flags.

“You _are_ good at this, you crazy toff bastard,” Ray says reassuringly, twirling a flag. “That was a damned tricky one, and you almost got it. Man, sometimes I think you forget you’ve only been here a month or so. You don’t have to know everything yet, you know?”

“I should,” Brad starts to say, and Ray waves him off. Sometimes Brad’s crazy. Ray’s learned to accept this.

“Well, anyway, I don’t care if you do or not, so long as you know enough to get stationed with me on Laet, and you’re totally already a shoo-in for that. Even without your brilliant flag-reading skills, which, I assure you, are pretty damned scintillating. Laet loves me—no, shut up, she does, she thinks I’m incorrigible and adorable and plucky, and I am. No sweat, my friend. We’ll get you aboard.”

“Do another,” Brad insists, but his shoulders have relaxed and he’s smiling again—smiling brightly, actually, knocking his knee against Ray’s. Which is pretty cool. Usually Ray’s the one to initiate contact. Brad’s not the most touchy-feely of blokes, though he usually tolerates it when Ray tackles him into a bearhug or goes to sleep on his shoulder. “A hard one, too. I’ll get it this time. Besides, it’s the captains that decide who gets appointed where, isn’t it? The captains and the lieutenants, and they decide that based on reports from the instructors."

Ray shakes his head. "Brother, do you have a lot to learn," he says, and goes through a new signal pattern—he can’t give Brad something easy, or Brad’ll thump him and act snotty and insulted for the rest of the week, so it’s pretty difficult. But Brad’s watching him intently, eyes alert and following the flickering colors deftly. Ray’s pretty sure this one’s in the bag, so he settles back to explain how the Corps _really_ works as he flashes the flags about.

"See, that's not how it goes, not on the really brilliant dragons that have decent captains, anyway, and that's where you want to end up. Sure, you'll get a post on a captain's say-so, but any captain worth their salt takes their dragon's opinions into consideration, I reckon. That's how it goes with Laet and Portland. We had this real tosser of a rifleman aboard for a while, Trombley, and he kept spouting off how dragons were just dumb animals, useless without men aboard. Daft weedy little twat, but he was a crack shot, damned impressive, gotta admit it. And I dunno, maybe he wasn't too bad, just kinda young, hadn't been around dragons much as a kid. But still, he called Laet a horse to her face. She could sneeze the little twit into a billion pieces and he calls her a horse! Jesus wept. He got demoted to ground duty the next day."

“'Injured allied heavyweight to the north-east requires assistance. Respond if able, if not, pass message along to next patrol,' Brad interrupts, and Ray grins.

"Hey, that was a damned tricky one, too! And in the dark, while I was talking up a fucking storm!" he cheers, then croons, "Who's my star cadet? Who's the Corps' golden boy? You are! That's right! Ensign, here you come!"

"You'll wake the others again," Brad chides, rolling his eyes and thumping Ray a little harder than strictly necessary on the shoulder.

"Ow!" Ray whispers, wrinkling his nose, rubbing his shoulder, then subsides. "See, puddin', you'll do brilliant, and then you'll be up with me and Laet permanently. It'll be fantastic, and then we'll make riflemen, and maybe bellmen, and then we'll save the queen and get knighted. Sir Raymond Person!"

"You mean I'll get to listen to you jabber all day for years to come?" Brad drawls; he’s smiling hugely and the last of the tension has gone out of his shoulders. Maybe now they can finally both get some damn sleep. "Marvelous. Can't wait."

"You love it," Ray tells him, and when Brad doesn't deny it, just smiles and rolls his eyes again, Ray feels pretty damn golden himself.

***

Ray's patience is rewarded unexpectedly a few months later, and by that time he's almost forgotten about it. He's spent so long carefully tiptoeing around Brad's past that it's almost second nature by now.

They'd snuck out of the covert the night before and into Dover proper to find some of the whores the older boys were always talking about. It had been a great success, in Ray's opinion, except for how the whores kept pinching his cheeks and calling him adorable, and how Brad kept wheezing with laughter and begging for them to stop before he threw up. That part was kind of off-putting, but then Lilah bought them both a pint at the bar and gave Ray a kiss for free, 'to grow on,' she'd said, and then they got to watch a real saloon show, with dancing girls and a piano.

Ray is singing one of the songs now as he mends harness with Brad. It's a crisp, brilliant spring afternoon, and the wind tastes green with the promise of summer heat. Soon Laetificat would be going into battle, and he and Brad and Pappy and Rudy would be aboard when she did.

"Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen, and here's to the widow of fifty!" Ray warbles, and jabs a needle through the tough leather. "Here's to the flaunting extravagant queen, and--"

"Do you know, my mother never wanted children," Brad says, out of complete fucking nowhere, and Ray stabs himself with the needle and bites back a cry as bright blood wells up from his palm. He looks at Brad with wide eyes, but Brad is still frowning at his handful of brass clips and straps. "She was one of the darlings of the ton, and I ruined her figure and her complexion." He glances up, briefly, and Ray gets a glimpse of eyes winter cold beneath their lashes before Brad looks down again. His voice turns drawling and dripping with humor, like Brad's talking about someone else. Not his mother, not himself. Someone in a play or story. "I'm told she has since gained them back and is now without peer for beauty once again. But she found having a son around reminded her suitors of her age and hindered her attempts to catch a second husband.” A beat passes. “My father recently died, you see. He was only a naval captain, and he was lost at sea.”

There is a pause where Ray tries to come up with something to say, an offer of sympathy, condolences, _something_. Then Brad smiles, and it's sharp and painful and Ray wants to find this woman--who has to be as beautiful as Brad says, because Brad himself is all flawless lines, pale golds and blues and roses--he wants to find this aristocratic beauty and throttle her and shove her into a midden until she drowns in shit and garbage. No one should make Brad look like that.

"My mother looks especially beautiful in her widow's weeds," Brad says, smiling. "Her color is well-suited to them. I believe she has her eyes set on a duke, this time. A duke that already has plenty of heirs to spare, and money to spend."

"But," Ray stutters, and this isn't fair. Every other time in his life he can't shut himself up, and now when he needs his mouth to form words, it's failing him, tongue-tied and useless. His own mother was never a beauty. She was gray and tired and had a sharp tongue, but she'd always loved him in her rough way, had dropped kisses on his head and done her best to scrape together money to buy him and his sisters a toffee or two on market days. She hadn't wanted to give Ray up.

He wants to call Brad's mother a bitch, but that can't be right, somehow. He wants to fling his arms around Brad and tell him he's wanted, right here, that he belongs in the Corps, belongs in the air.

"Why not the Navy? Why'd you join the Corps?" he asks finally, which is so totally inadequate he sort of wants to strangle himself, but Brad laughs unexpectedly.

"Would you believe I get seasick?" There's a tiny smile on Brad's face, self-mocking and impossibly dear.

"Get the fuck out of here, you do not." Ray refuses to believe it. Brad is sure-footed on dragonback, taking all the spins and turns and turbulence without ruffling a hair. Ray can't imagine him any differently aboard a ship, regardless of the sea beneath. Surely the sea and sky aren't so different.

"I assure you, Ray, I do. Regardless of the weather, I attempt to relieve myself of my internal organs for hours at a time. I'm told I have impressive range, especially during storms."

"Huh," Ray says. "Well. Good thing you ended up here, then."

"Yes," Brad says quietly, and an uncomfortable but warm silence settles between them for the next few minutes. Then Ray realizes Brad is humming, softly, and Ray will be forced to join in on the chorus, Brad knows how that shit works.

"Give me but a friend and a glass, boys," he sings quietly, and doesn't look over, but he doesn’t sing the new bawdy lyrics he’s recently made up, not this time. "I'll show you what 'tis to be gay. I'll ne'er lose my head for a lass, boys."

"We'll live twenty four hours a day," Brad sings back, low and scratchy, and it turns out there is something Bradley Colbert cannot do, and that's carry a tune in a bucket. Ray smiles to himself. He doesn't much mind. Brad Colbert's singing may possibly be the best thing he's ever heard.

***

_Spanish Coast, June 1798_

Brad is a complete sodding idiot, Ray realizes, wind whipping past his ears. It’s the first real battle they’ve ever been in, their first action. It’s supposed to be amazing, and it _isn’t_. His eyes are stinging from powder, and Brad has slipped loose of his carabiners and gone to fight the boarders. Fourteen years old, and he’s staring down a Frenchman that has to be two stones heavier and two decades older than he is. The bloody tosser doesn’t even look scared, because he’s clearly _insane_.

Ray’s going to have to do something, that much is clear. And he admits Brad’s got a point—the captain and his lieutenants are hard pressed by six Frenchmen already, and if this seventh had gotten into the thick of things, well. It’d been drilled into them all: never let a captain be captured.

But what the bloody fuck Brad thinks he’s going to do against this monster of a man, who’s sneering down at the slight teenager, Ray has no fucking clue. Brad probably has a plan, he’s always got a plan, but he’s still sort of new, unfamiliar with the protocol, and Ray knows any second now Laet’s going to roll to try to dislodge most of the boarders, and Brad’s not strapped in anymore.

It’s only been a few seconds, but time is oddly stretched. Ray can hear each of his heartbeats with distinct clarity, the thud-swish, thud-swish of blood in his veins as he unclips his own carabiners and bolts along the length of Laetificat’s back.

Bullets pepper the air around him, and he hears Laet roaring, thinks distantly that she’ll hate getting those removed later. Last time she’d been in battle, the doc had made him and Hasser help with the pliers. He remembers the stink of cauterized flesh in his nose, the scorched smell of crisped scales.

He sees Brad dodge the Frenchman’s saber, sees the man’s face crumple in shock as Brad delivers a sharp kick to one of his knees. It’s like seeing the world in stuttering slides. He doesn’t quite remember reaching Brad, but he’s suddenly clipping their carabiners together and then stuffing his arm beneath the tight band of Laet’s shoulder harness just as the world begins to tilt and spin.

The Frenchman staggers, then falls, and Brad’s arms are tight around Ray’s waist, and he’s still there when the world comes right-side up again.

“You dumb fuck,” Ray breathes. He can’t quite look at Brad. He’s angry. Should he be angry? He is, so he supposes it doesn’t matter. Right or wrong, he’s furious, no point worrying about why when he’s having a hard enough time focusing on not bursting into shocked tears, like some kind of landlubbing, groundbound townie.

“Boarders repelled,” the first lieutenant calls out, and one of the topmen helps Ray and Brad to their feet. Ray shakes out his fingers, numb and bloodless.

“Bravely done,” the man says, clapping Brad, then Ray on the back, and Ray distantly thinks this will help their chances of advancing.

“Ray,” Brad says tentatively, and Ray shrugs his hand off, looks through him. They don’t talk again the whole flight, not really. They pass on the messages from the signal flags, and Ray doesn’t look at Brad’s face, ignores the trembling in his own hands. They are several thousand feet in the air. He remembers the Frenchman’s face as he fell away towards the green swell of earth, the gentle roll of hills. Some poor shepherd or farmer would find the man later, maybe, what was left of him after he’d hit the ground, after the crows and dogs and flies were done with him.

“I have to help Doctor Bennett,” he says to Brad when they land, and Brad scowls.

“Ray, don’t play a scrub with me. What’s wrong? Have you been injured?” Brad’s gaze suddenly sharpens. “Were you—was there—were you shot, Ray?”

What’s _wrong_ , he asks. Was _Ray_ shot, like he has no bloody idea how close he was to death, like he doesn’t care—and Ray hauls back and suddenly his fist hurts and Brad’s mouth is leaking bright red and he looks flabbergasted. Any other time, it’d be hilarious, the wide startled eyes and dumb slack expression of shock.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he hisses, and then Pappy’s there, tugging him away, talking him down. Pappy’s been in battles before, and he’s got a nice soothing Irish patter. By the time they finish helping Doc Bennett pluck the bullets out of poor Laet’s hide, Ray’s gotten a better grip on himself. He knows they’ve beat the bloody Frogs back from their port again, and that there were no casualties among the men, that the little Winchester that reported the French force approaching has a ripped wing but should mend in a few weeks.

“C’mon,” Rudy says, after exchanging a complicated look with Pappy. They’re in the baths and Ray’s washing splatters of dark dragon blood off of his hands. “You did good, brother. Let’s get a drink in you, yeah?”

Ray kind of wants to just to curl up somewhere and be still, but he lets the older boys lead him off to the mess hall, and it’s actually nice, being around a crowd of people. Everyone’s happy, cheerful after a successful battle, and it all blends into a warm, familiar sound, a cushion of conversations going on around him that he doesn’t have to participate in. Rudy’s somehow gotten a bottle of fine brandy—Ray’s not going to ask tonight, but he’ll definitely worm out his sources later. Somehow Rudy always gets the best, top of the line quality booze, no grog for him. It’s smooth and pear-flavored and Ray finally stops feeling quite so cold, like something more vital and more heated than blood is leaking out of an unseen wound.

Captain Portland even comes by later, smiling, and tells Ray he’s proud, that he’s growing up well. Ray smiles, puffs up, and then remembers that he punched Brad, holy hell. Portland doesn’t know about that, obviously—if he did, Ray’d be on tack duty for months and months to come, demerit on top of demerit. So Brad must not have said anything—well, of course he hadn’t, Brad’s no snitch. But still. Ray starts feeling a bit squirmy and uneasy, and he’s lost the edge of righteous fury. Maybe… fuck, maybe he should apologize. But he doesn’t want to apologize. He’s still angry, still has a hot throb behind his eyes that makes him want to start smashing things. He frowns uncertainly at the table. This shouldn’t be so difficult to figure out, he’s almost positive.

Of course, that’s when Brad slides into the seat next to him, eyes narrowed.

Ray grabs at his glass of brandy and holds it defensively in front of himself. “What, I’m sorry,” he says quickly, then winces, because Brad just raises his eyebrows and looks disdainful. Ray hates that look, it means Brad’s hiding something, hiding behind a polished mirrored surface, and he should never have to hide anything from Ray, ever.

“You’re _sorry_?” Brad drawls, except it’s a little stilted, because his mouth is swollen, probably painful, and Ray did that. He’d hit Brad! What the fuck had he been thinking? And oh, hell, Ray really doesn’t want to do this here, in front of all their friends and superiors. He bolts the rest of the glass, sets it unsteadily down on the table with a clink that seems strangely loud.

“Outside,” he announces. “We’ll talk outside.” He stands up, and wow. There’s a difference between a pint of bitter and a glass or two of brandy, because he feels like he’s suddenly grown taller, like the floor’s farther away than it should be, and he staggers a bit before adjusting himself. He hears Brad sigh irritably, and oh, there’s the anger again, that _Brad_ thinks _he_ gets to be irritated, and Ray’s stomping for the door before he can think better of it.

He gets outside in the cool night air of the courtyard and starts pacing, trying to outrun his own thoughts. But he can’t, he keeps seeing it again, only it’s not a nameless Frenchman falling, it’s Brad, hand outstretched and eyes wide with surprise, and fuck fuck fuck, Ray’s eyes are getting wet. He’s such an infant.

Brad comes up behind him and Ray shoots him a glance, sees Brad’s face like a thundercloud and his arms crossed over his chest. Ray rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to pull it together.

“I am sorry,” he says, and he is, but he’s still mad, and fuck, he didn’t even know he could be this much of a mess of emotions, as tangled inside as Laet’s harness had been the day he and Brad’d first met. “I’m sorry I hit you.”

Brad’s peering at him, and he looks bewildered and a bit hurt beneath the outraged posture he’s pulling, and oh, great, now Ray’s feeling guilty again. He puts a hand to his head. Maybe it’s the brandy, or the back and forth of angry-sad-angry-guilty-terrifed-angry, but he’s dizzy with whatever it is.

“Why?” Brad bursts out, and Ray winces. “You’re angry with me. I don’t—what did I do wrong?”

“What did you _do_?” Ray shouts, and Brad’s eyes go huge and he makes a shushing gesture, which, fine, Ray supposes it’d be best to let sleeping dragons lie, so he moderates his voice a bit. “You almost—you could have died, you enormous sodding tosser, you—”

He’s gotten Brad’s shoulders and is shaking them and his eyes are wet again and he makes himself let go.

Brad still looks confused, and vastly more alarmed than he had before. “Is it…” he ventures. “I should have thanked you for your help. I was going to, I was, only you were being all…” He gestures vaguely at Ray and Ray barks out a laugh.

“I don’t need your thanks,” he sneers, throwing his hands up in the air. “Fine, you really want to know? You want to know what’s wrong?” His voice is shaking, and he doesn’t _care_. “I was scared. I’m scared. You almost died, and you don’t care, you don’t care, but _I_ do, and everyone else is just, just, patting you on the back, like, ‘Well done, Ensign Colbert, wonderful job on nearly plummeting to your messy death,' but I _don’t_ think it was a good job. It was stupid. You didn’t have to do it. You were stupid, you stupid idiot, and if you ever die I’m going to piss on your grave, don’t you think I fucking won’t.”

“Ray,” Brad says, holding out his hands, palms out, placating, and Ray knocks them aside.

“No, don’t ‘Ray’ me,” he shouts. “I’m not—you can’t just make a face and I’ll forget. You didn’t have to do that, go after that man. You should have told another officer! You should have asked me to come with you. It was stupid, and I can’t stop—I can’t stop thinking about it, and you don’t even—”

“ _Ray_ ,” and Brad’s hands are on his shoulders now, and wow, Ray is crying, this is the worst day of his life. “Ray, I’m… I’m sorry. Ray, I’m sorry.” And then he’s hesitantly wrapping his arms around Ray and Ray just concentrates on breathing for a moment, on the sweat-smell of Brad, on the sound of snoring dragons. “You’re right. I’ll be more careful.”

“Damn straight, you will,” he croaks finally, and shoves Brad away. Brad’s watching him, and Ray raises a hand, drops it again.

“Um,” he says uncertainly, wavering. “Sorry about your face. Your mouth…fuck.”

“Like your scrawny arms could do any real damage to perfection like this,” Brad says easily, and Ray laughs, too loud and bright and relieved, because they’re okay. Brad’s okay. He doesn’t think Ray’s soft, or an infant, and he’s okay. He’s alive. “Come on, lightweight, let’s get you to bed.”

“’m not a lightweight!” Ray says indignantly, and then stumbles over the step back into the barracks. “I just…can’t. Um.”

“Um,” Brad says mockingly, and then, softer, “I really did mean to thank you.”

“Don’t,” Ray says sharply, because he doesn’t want to be thanked for saving Brad’s life. He doesn’t want Brad’s life to need to be saved. He shakes his head like he can get rid of the image, shake it free like a clinging bug or a stray leaf. It sort of works, because he’s distracted by the mess the motion makes of his vision and his footsteps, and the way Brad sounds laughing at him. He gives Brad a lopsided grin, bright as he can. “Hey.”

Brad raises an eyebrow, and waits, and because Ray’s still a little bit mad, he refuses to elaborate, makes Brad ask, which he knows Brad hates. Tough. Ray hates watching Brad _almost die_.

“What?” Brad says exasperatedly, dumping Ray into his bed, and Ray has a moment where the world spins unpleasantly, but it comes back into focus and it’s Brad, glaring down at him.

“Can we go over the signal flags again?” he asks, not sure why he’s asking. They both know the flags, the signals, backwards and forwards and out of the corners of their eyes and in their sleep, but Brad… Brad just softens, his eyes going bright. Ray likes it, likes that expression on Brad’s face.

“Yes,” Brad says, and starts digging around in Ray’s chest for the practice flags they’d made. “We can do that, Raymond.”

“Thanks,” Ray says, and Brad comes and sits at the head of the bed with him, warm and close, their shoulders and sides and legs all lined up, and then Brad lights a candle and all the shadows go soft and dancing. The barracks are empty, everyone’s still out celebrating, and Ray falls asleep with the soft flurry of flags still before his eyes, slurring out, “Cover Longwing’s right quadrant” and hearing Brad say quietly, “Good, Ray. That’s good.”

***

_Dover, May 1801_

The trouble with sneaking out and hanging with the streetwalkers in Dover every couple weeks and having them all pinch his cheeks and kiss his forehead and teach him their best bawdy songs is—well, actually, there are multiple levels of trouble. One is that Brad still thinks it’s hilarious, because for some reason the whores talk to him like he’s a grown man, even though he’s only a year or two older than Ray. Just because he’s got a foot and a stone of muscle more. It’s not fair. Even worse, though, is that now that Ray’s finally of an age to actually potentially purchase some lewd company, he _still_ can’t, because all the girls think of him as their little brother, even the newcomers.

Truth be told, he admits he’s not really that interested—he’s heard way too much about the girls’ clients and their diseases and their families and, well, it’s just not that appealing anymore. Mainly he wants to punch most of the dumbass arseholes that the ladies have to deal with.

But anyway, it’s the principle of the thing. It’s unfair. Brad’s already had honest-to-God sex with Joan Tomlinson, and refuses to give Ray any of the details. He won’t even let Ray smell his hand like Garza and Kocher had. It’s driving Ray crazy. Ray’s grown up with Tomlinson and Jacobs and McDonaugh, the young female aviators. He’s known them since he was a squeaker, loves them all, and none of them will have sex with him.

Well, Jacobs let him feel her breasts in the baths a couple years ago in exchange for an opportunity to examine his penis up close, but it didn’t go much further than that. He’d marveled at the odd firmness of her breasts, the hardness of her nipples. She’d crouched down, tilted her head, lifted his cock with a finger and then prodded his balls carefully while Ray giggled helplessly. They both pronounced themselves satisfied with the experiment, though Ray was a little disappointed he hadn’t gotten to explore further, and that’d been that.

But he’s never gone any farther with anyone else, hasn’t really even pressed to. And now Brad has, and Ray can’t stop thinking of it, of how he’d walked in on them, the wet sounds their mouths had made, how much taller Brad was than Tomlinson. It’d just been a flash, Ray rounding a corner in the stables and there they’d been, and he’d backed away immediately, but just that glimpse, it’s still in his head, has been replaying all day, over and over again.

Now Brad’s sleeping the sleep of the blissfully well-fucked, the tosser, but Ray’s still awake, antsy and unhappy in a deep, skittering way that keeps him from being able to lay still or close his eyes. It’s early yet, the sun barely down, but it’s been brutal, the endless patrolling they’ve been doing lately, and everyone’s conked out early. He can’t even while away the hours with cards or something, he’s stuck here inside his own head. He thinks about trying to pleasure himself, but he can’t focus long enough to come to completion, not with Brad snoring gently a bed away and Espera talking irritably in his sleep across the room.

Finally, moving quietly and carefully, Ray slips out of the room in his stocking feet and makes his way over to the back wall of the courtyard, boots in hand. There’s a maple tree there that stretches over the parapets, and it’s the work of a minute to shimmy over it and out into the town. He feels the slightest, tiniest bit better in the cool night air, the smell of horse urine and refuse and unwashed dock workers washing over him in a distracting miasma.

He makes his way to the saloon, where Scarlet Charlotte lets him buy her a pint and pets his hair. Ray feels a lot better after about an hour of smoke and booze and a gorgeous red-head running her nails over his scalp as he grumbles about Brad and she gives him all the gossip on what general’s been seen where in what town establishment and how one of their French girls keeps getting trouble from noble-minded patriotic countrymen. This neatly distracts Ray from his own troubles by making his blood boil with indignation.

As though Noëlle has anything to do with that bastard Boney; he’s seething just thinking about it. Charlotte laughs and tells him they’ve got their own ways of handling it, not to worry his pretty little head.

“My head is not pretty,” Rays retorts, dignified as he possibly can be when he knows paint in the perfect shape of Charlotte’s lips is daintily imprinted onto his forehead, a blazon that screams ‘plonker who can’t plow a lass and has to settle for forehead kisses instead.’ He scrubs at it ruefully.

“You’ve got it bad, honey,” Charlotte says, pursing her lips into a dainty moue, and Ray glares at her and pillows his head on his arms, ignoring the stickiness of the bar beneath them.

“Got what bad?” he grumbles. “Pretty-head? Is that some sort of terrifying sexual condition now? I suppose you’d know. Ow!”

She’s got a wicked punch for a saloon girl, and he tells her so admiringly.

“You’re sweet,” she says, and Ray sighs.

“Disregarding that that’s the most emasculating thing anyone’s said to me today, you know for a fact it’s not true.”

“You’re a dreadful, hateful, obnoxious little asshole of an aviator,” she agrees. “And if you pinch any more bottoms today, I’ll have Fred toss you out back into the midden. But you’re still sweet.”

“Argh,” Ray says woefully. This probably never happens to Brad. Brad probably just smoldered at Tomlinson and Tomlinson smoldered back and then they both ripped off their clothes and compared rippling abdominal muscles and had hot, terrifyingly competent sex all over the place. “Brad never gets called sweet, I bet,” he says wistfully. “He is, sort of, but not really. Maybe he’s more tart. Not a tart. That’s too common, Brad’s not common. Maybe something spicy. Cinnamon. Cinnamon with almonds. ‘N icing.”

“Petal,” Charlotte says, interrupting his monologue on what sort of pastry Brad would be, for which Ray is grateful, but there’s something slightly odd about her voice. Ray can’t quite place it. He’s had rather a lot to drink, and he’s tired, and it’s loud here by the bar. “Have you met our new pianist yet?”

“You’ve a new pianist?” Ray asks, perking up. He loves music, and sometimes the girls let him fiddle around with the instruments, the jew harps and drums.

“Mm hmm,” she says. “Let me introduce you.”

The pianist is young, only a few years older than Ray himself. He’s got dark hair and green eyes and a lazy smile. His name is Joseph Bones, apparently, and he’s more than happy to let Ray sit next to him and watch him play. He scoots over on the piano bench and pats the worn wood beside him, and Ray plops down, grinning.

“Raymond Person,” Joseph says, charming and lilting, with a Welsh accent. Ray’s always liked those, the rise and fall of the syllables turning the slightest word exotic and musical. “I’ve heard of you. Heard you torment all the girls and tried to make away with one of our gitterns.”

“Well, no worries, friend,” Ray says, widening his eyes innocently. “I doubt I’ll be able to lug your piano far. Maybe if I rope a dragon or two into the scheme. We’ll be musical pirates. If you know any good sea shanties, we may do you the great honor of letting you come along as well.” He’s gratified when Joseph laughs instead of shoving him off the bench.

“Hey, I can turn the pages for you, if you want,” Ray offers, because he really doesn’t want to be sent away. He wants to lose himself in the music, just for a bit, before he drags his miserable self home and back to his cold, empty, virginal bed. “Pay my dues, all that.”

Joe’s great. He’s got a charming smile and a great voice, and he’s possessed of an actual talent for piano, better than the last no-account player they’d had in here, who was fired for vomiting on the patrons and pulling off a girl’s skirt during her act.

Ray spends the rest of the night turning pages, and is pleased that Joe leans into Ray’s side as he plays, that he’s willing to answer Ray’s questions about the mysterious succession of notes and symbols on the paper, explaining the notations. After an hour or so Ray’s finally in a pretty good mood, the best he’s been in since he walked in on Brad and Tomlinson half-naked and kissing. When the bar’s emptied out a bit more, Joe lets Ray attempt a few melodies of his own. Ray can do it if he’s not thinking too hard. He can find the notes he wants, but he still can’t quite read the sheet music, has to slow down and squint. It’s frustrating, but Joe’s patient and teasing, tells him he has a good ear, good hands.

“Thanks,” Ray says, slowing his fingers on the keys, and feels oddly warm, blushing.

The bar’s closing down, and the piano’s off in a dimly lit corner. When Joseph leans in and brushes a strand of hair out of Ray’s eyes, Ray catches his breath and thinks, oh. That’s why Charlotte sounded so strange earlier.

“Is this alright?” Joseph asks, and lets his fingers dance across the keys in a drifting, playful riff that brings his hands flush against Ray’s. Ray startles and there’s a moment of discordance, a moment where he can’t catch his breath. Then he thinks of Brad’s back, Tomlinson’s small delicate hands tracing over it, running down his spine, the trim lines of Brad’s hips, and then he forces his mind blank, concentrates on playing the riff back to Joseph, on speeding it up and changing the key. He smiles his best mid-air smile, all teeth and bravado, and says, “Well, obviously.”

It’s not like he thought it would be. He’s jittery and hot and already hard, just thinking about what could happen. He could drill a hole in a cannonball with his pecker, if he wanted. Which he doesn’t. But it’s alarming, so he doesn’t let himself think about it too much, lets Joseph lead him off into a back hallway and then, after fluttering his hands uselessly for a bit, just goes for it. He’s seen people kissing and being kissed before, and only after he’s already shoved Joseph against the wall and pressed their mouths together does he think to wonder if maybe men don’t do this.

But Joseph is moaning into his mouth, sounding pleased, and his hands are around Ray’s waist, stroking his back, and it feels good, it feels good to be touched. Joseph nips at Ray’s lower lip and everything goes hot and Ray surges up and their teeth are scraping together, wet and messy. It’s messy. Ray didn’t expect that, but it is, it’s messy and good, and he wonders if it was like this for Brad. He wonders if Brad felt this way when Tomlinson circled his waist with her tiny hands. Joseph’s hands aren’t as big as Brad’s, but they’re still quite large, and heavy, and Ray pushes up into them with a gasp.

“Fuck yes, like that,” he says, startled and panting.

“Like that?” Joseph teases, and twists his hand and oh Christ, the feel of someone else’s skin, someone else’s hand upon him, it’s not the same as touching himself at all. He stutters out a warning and then comes all over Joseph’s fingers. He feels as though he has keys and notes and tempos written all over his body for Joseph to read, like his body’s an instrument and he’s played an unfamiliar song for the first time, and now he’ll never stop hearing it thrumming underneath his skin. His body can feel like this, electric and desperate and alive. He had no idea.

“Well, that was embarrassingly quick,” Ray notes, gulping in air and staring at the ceiling, his muscles too limp for him to hold up his head properly. Joseph just throws back his own head and laughs.

“You’re young,” he says, and for once it sounds like that’s a good thing. “Give it another minute or so, yeah? You’ll be standing to attention again, if I’ve anything to say about it.”

Ray wants to taste the sweat he can see glistening in the hollow of Joseph’s throat, so he leans in and nuzzles. Joseph makes an interested, purring noise and rocks his hips against Ray’s again. Ray feels shaky all over, and there’s a hard hot line against his thigh. He remembers the girls talking about men liking their mouths, and Ray wants to learn that, wants to be able to do that. Wants to be able to make a man gasp and moan and call his name, even if—even if he doesn’t want to examine his reasons too closely, he wants to know how, wants to be good at it.

He drops to his knees on the hard, dusty floor and Joseph’s eyes fly wide open, and then go to half-mast.

“You’re sure?” he asks, eyes dark, and runs his thumb over Ray’s lower lip. Ray feels like every blood vessel in his entire body is engorged, like every scrap of skin he owns is awake and thrumming and aware. He opens his mouth and laves his tongue over Joseph’s finger, tentatively scrapes his teeth over the calloused pad, and Joseph hisses, “Christ.”

Ray knows he can’t be extremely good at this. He’s sloppy and choking and Joseph keeps having to guide his head to keep him on tempo, on the right pace. But Ray likes it, likes the cock in his mouth, the stretch and salt-taste of it, likes the sharp sting of tugging fingers in his hair. He moans around Joseph, imagines Tomlinson like this, on her knees, looking up at Brad, Brad’s hands cradling the back of her skull. Did she do this, did she, did Brad like it? Joseph likes it, he must, because when Ray glances up from beneath his lashes, Joseph’s mouth is open and he looks wrecked, panting.

When Ray chokes on his seed, dribbles it everywhere and coughs a hacking, terrible cough, because Lord, he thinks the blasted stuff is in his lungs, Joseph just slumps against the wall and blinks, breathing. Eventually he leans over and wipes Ray’s face clean with his shirt tail, kisses his mouth, like he’s tasting himself, and somehow that’s absolutely ungodly, lewdly hot. Then Joseph drops to his own knees and returns the favor, and Ray feels like he really _is_ going to die.

He staggers back out to the bar afterwards, and it’s late, so late the sun has to be coming up soon, and he’s got to make it back to the barracks before the light does or he’s in deep shit. Charlotte and Lilah see him, sweaty and wrecked, his clothing a shambles, and they’re both smirking. Ray blushes, but then pulls himself together and manages to tell them he wants tips later, since now they’re all in this business of pleasuring men together. Though Ray supposes he won’t be selling his wares, since he does have a job to do on dragonback and he can’t afford to be distracted by the doubtless countless clients he’d attract when there’s a war going on. Then he kisses his hand to the both of them and scampers into the street before they can tease him any further. It’s a cool night, the salty sea breeze stinging his flushed cheeks, and he eels along the dark alleys and manages to avoid confrontations with any drunkards or wastrels.

He has time for an hour or two of sleep after all, he realizes gratefully, toeing off his shoes and stealing back into their room. He feels strange, oddly light, and a bit like he might have a nasty headache when he wakes up in the morning—he had put away a rather lot of beer before Charlotte’d led him over to Joseph’s Piano Bench of Sexual Awakenings. He’s shucking off his trousers and changing into a clean nightshirt, silent and congratulating himself on his obviously excellent skills at stealth, and then he sees Brad watching him. All the breath leaves his lungs in a rush.

Brad’s laying in bed, hair limned in moonlight that’s coming in from the window, and his eyes are glittering and alert. Ray makes himself move again, tries to finish buttoning up his shirt with clumsy fingers. He tries to be nonchalant, wonders if he smells like sex. Like male sex. Female sex probably smells different, somehow. He sketches a tiny wave at Brad, who doesn’t respond, just stares, and then Ray crawls into bed. A moment passes and he turns his head and Brad’s still watching at him, creepy bastard that he is, with his face terrifyingly blank.

“ _What_?” Ray mouths, and feels a shock of guilty heat when he thinks of how red and used his lips must look, how maybe Brad can see that. It’s dark, but Brad has excellent vision. Ray knows this. He wonders if maybe he wants Brad to see. He licks his lips, and Christ, is he getting hard again? He is. How miserable. Being sixteen is awful.

“You went to town,” Brad mouths back, face stony and unhappy. The ‘without me’ is unsaid but lingers in the air between them.

“You were sleeping,” Ray hisses, and then because he’s an idiot and hates when Brad glares at him, he caves and apologizes. “Sorry.” Sorry for kissing someone that’s not you. Sorry for wanting to kiss you. Sorry for how I’m never going to tell you what happened tonight, because I always tell you everything, but not this. Never this. Ray doesn’t know how he’s going to survive this, this hot painful wanting. It was easier not having it all so clearly emblazoned in his head, the things he wants to do.

“It’s not serious,” Brad whispers back, and Ray blinks.

“Huh?” he snorts inelegantly.

“Me and Tomlinson. I know you saw us. I just wanted you to know. I’m not courting her or anything.”

“Well, I should bloody well hope not!” Ray splutters, and Garza coughs warningly, so he lowers his voice again. “She’d shove any flowers you brought her up your bumhole. What’s a girl like Tomlinson want with courting? She’ll have her own dragon, soon enough.”

“I _know_ that,” Brad said, and his face is just the way Ray likes it, one side of his mouth crooked down slightly in exasperation, but his eyes still fond and somehow smiling. Brad can smile with just his eyes, with a lift of a brow, it’s uncanny and bizarre and probably witchcraft and it takes everything Ray has not to bury his face in his pillow and moan, because this is his life now. He’s a useless, besotted pansy. He’s probably going to start writing odes to Bradley Colbert’s eyebrows any day now, and bringing _him_ flowers, and then Tomlinson will laugh herself sick and Brad will shove the damn plants up _Ray’s_ arse, and wow. Wow, now is not the time to think of Brad and Ray’s arse and all the anecdotes Ray’s every heard on the joys of buggery. He squirms uncomfortably and realizes Brad’s been talking this whole time.

“Uh,” he whispers, and Brad nods, looking satisfied, and Ray is drawing a total blank on what he was saying. He racks his head, and some autopilot version of himself had apparently been listening after all, because he remembers Brad saying something about how they’re all too busy for relationships, that the Corps is their duty or mistress or wife or whatever, and how Ray needs to be more responsible and not sneak out and be such a twat, and if he’s useless for the rest of the day, Brad’s going to beat his lousy, soused arse black and blue with his boot. Typical Brad rant.

“You can beat my arse anytime you want,” Ray agrees automatically, and Brad blinks. And wow, that is more than enough for one night. Ray ignores Brad’s open mouth—We’re ignoring! He tells his cock sternly, _Ignore_ , and then rolls over, buries his face in his pillow, and tries not to dream.


	2. Chapter 2

_Dover, Mid-November, 1805_

“This is going to be goddamned miserable,” Ray says unhappily, pacing. Since Temeraire won that sodding battle at Dover, all the aviators over eighteen are being made to attend a _ball_ in his honor in London next week. Stupid fucking dragon. No, that isn’t fair. It’s probably for the best Temeraire’d won the battle, given that it’d prevented them all dying in a blaze of futile glory and England from being overrun by Frogs. And besides, Ray actually likes Temeraire. He’s curious and loves a good conversation and if you leave the two of them alone for a while, they can get up an awesome ramble on British moral systems and socioeconomic classes and gender difference.

Still, a fucking _ball_. That is just unnecessary.

“I mean, just think of it, all those fucking silk streamers and garlands and chandeliers, who needs that? You want to celebrate, you get a pitcher of beer, a piano, a girl on your knee. This dance is just a superfluous public demonstration of wealth and tastelessness that would be better spent on cattle for the dragons and new leathers for the men.” Brad nods vaguely, hands behind his back. “And you know what, I don’t think Captain Laurence much cares for me, so maybe I won’t go anyway. Maybe they won’t even notice I’m not there, or maybe Laurence can request I be barred from entrance,” Ray muses hopefully, but he’s starting to suspect Brad’s not paying attention.

He’d followed Ray when he had stomped out of the dining hall after their mandatory ballroom attendance had been announced, but he hasn’t had much to say. He’s just lounging on the battlements next to Ray in the watery winter sunlight, listening—or _not_ listening, as the case may be—to Ray’s ranting. Ray is getting more and more certain that Brad is in fact ignoring him – he’s peering over the parapets down at the town and sea below, humming cheerfully to himself. Other than a long scratch on his temple, angry and red, he looks the very image of a young Greek god surveying his domain.

The scratch is the only reminder of the reckless, brilliant boarding he’d made on one of the French middleweights during the battle of Dover, two weeks prior. Luckily, Ray has resigned himself by now to Brad’s idiotic, death-defying antics and managed not to piss himself when he saw it happen. Brad’s older now, knows what’s expected of him and what to expect from a battle, and Ray’s learned not to think of death. He’s a solider, an aviator, and death is common-place. But that particular maneuver had still been a bit much for Ray’s nerves: Brad flinging himself across space and landing alone on the French dragon's back, a giant Parnassian brute with an enormous crew of its own, all up in arms. Ray’d pinched his nose, taken a deep breath, vowed to beat Brad to death with his own shoe later, after they’d survived all this bullshit, and then leapt after his comrade.

He’d managed to keep the bloody tosser from getting shot or eaten or thrown overboard to drown in the Atlantic, and what had he gotten for his troubles? A broken arm and a dozen lectures on personal safety. Which fine, so he’d landed badly—he’d still been able to use his pistol with his right hand, and that’s what mattered. Brad, of course, had come out with only a scratch, having captured the captain and his dragon, and now there are rumors he’s being considered for his own captaincy. The stupid twit. Ray’s over the moon, sure, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to reward reckless, death-defying shenanigans by telling Brad so.

“Are you listening? At all?” Ray asks crossly. He’s just realized Brad’s actually humming a minuet, the rotten traitor. “This ball is going to be _fucking wretched_. A complete waste of time and resources, the higher ups patting themselves on the back and getting good and pumped up and blowing a load of self-congratulatory semen all over us. And they expected us to lap it up, like they ever gave a fuck for aviators before last week. Oh, and Captain Laurence thinks I’m a bad influence on his runners. And his dragon. These are the topics being discussed, Brad, in case you didn’t notice: feel free to comment on them. Any of them. Say something and _stop humming_ , Christ, you can’t carry a note in a bucket.”

“Captain Laurence is a sensible man, Ray,” Brad replies cheerfully.” You _are_ a bad influence, Corporal, upon anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of you, and I include in that statement nuns, deaf mutes, and dumb beasts of burden.” Brad says all this with a sunny smile on his face.

He always gets this way after a victory, loose-limbed and bright-eyed. Battles agree with him. He’s a lunatic. Ray has had to resign himself to these bloodthirsty quirks over the years, and he may as well admit he finds it damnably charming.

“The filth that falls from your lips isn’t suitable for man or beast to listen to,” Brad continues companionably. “I’m surprised the Corps hasn’t fashioned you a muzzle yet.” Ray sticks out his tongue and crosses his eyes, pleased. He loves when Brad really gets a good insult going; it shows he still cares. The magic isn’t gone yet. These are things he occasionally says out loud, when he wants Hasser to go huge-eyed and spluttering or Espera to shake his head and talk about the underlying homoerotic subculture in the white man’s military. Depending on Brad’s mood, he either plays along or punches Ray in the shoulder. “Anyway, I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy that you and Captain Laurence think I’m a useless degenerate and that you think I should be gagged?” Ray asks, puzzled, and Brad laughs.

“Well, you should be gagged, it’s true, but no, I was talking about the ball. They’ll have the best orchestra in London there. It should be an enjoyable occasion.” He sighs. “Ray, you look like a sulky toddler. Stop sticking out your lower lip, it’s not befitting an aviator.” This, naturally, causes Ray to protrude his lip out further, and what’s more, to start wobbling it. Brad rolls his eyes. “I know you like music. There’ll be good music, and good food, _and_ girls in low-cut dresses showing off the most tasteful décolletage London has to offer. We’re all war heroes. What is there to pitch a tantrum over?”

“Hmmph,” Ray grumbles, scowling at his feet. This is embarrassing. He feels… he doesn’t want to go to London, to Brad’s birthplace, the society he grew up in. He knows Brad misses it, sometimes, misses the libraries and coffeeshops and his childhood acquaintances. Ray doesn’t want to go to a ball. He doesn’t want to see Brad the War Hero dancing with a face full of the best tits in London, while Ray the Pathetic Broken-Limbed Sidekick hovers moodily in the background, watching like a villain in a bad play. He doesn’t want to dance with anyone that isn’t—well, it’s a moot point anyway.

“Raymond Person,” Brad drawls, and his face is lighting up, an evil smirk growing larger and more evil with every second. Ray hides his face in his good hand. What has he ever done to deserve this, he wonders, and then shoots the sky a look. Don’t answer that, God. “ _You_ don’t know how to dance.”

“Want a fucking medal? No, of course I don’t. Not how to bloody ballroom dance, anyway.” Ray grew up in a damned coal-mining town; he was lucky to learn a few country dances and his sisters’ skipping rope moves. “We had lessons when I was eleven or so, I guess, but they didn’t really stick.” Also, Ray had skipped out on every one of them. “And anyway, I doubt I’ll dance much with this.” He waves around his splinted arm, then winces, because ow, stupid idea. Brad glares at him, eyebrows dipping briefly down. He’s already torn into Ray for his suicidal tendencies, which was _hilarious_ , honestly, since it was all Brad’s fault to begin with.

Ray’d pointed that out earlier. He’d gotten injured solely because Brad had needed back-up and had failed to adequately inform Ray of his battle plans—probably because he’d known they were stupid and that Ray would have tied Brad to Laet’s harness _forever_.

Anyway, Brad clearly now has a duty to be Ray’s slave for at least three weeks. Ray’d informed him of this, and even tossed in a leer and an eyebrow waggle that made Brad burst into laughter and say, “Ray, a good aviator learns to make use of both hands, alternating when the situation calls for, and if you think for one second I’m touching your syphilitic hide without layers upon layers of protective armor, you must have damaged more than your wrist in that fight.”

Fuck. It’s supposed to be easier this way, being able to make light of it. He’s going to wind up making calf eyes at Brad whether he likes it or not. He can’t stop himself. Best for Brad to think it’s all a joke, since most of it is anyway. Most of the time Ray just swoons against Brad’s big manly arms to get a laugh out of Hasser, or to make Espera roll his eyes, or to cheer Brad up after command’s sent them some obviously flawed orders that are going to get Laet all bruised up again and probably lose them some good men to boot. It’s normal, it’s just Ray being Ray. He only actually lets himself zone out on the muscles of Brad’s arms and the long lean lines of his thighs and the way he smiles, a flash of white teeth and bright blue eyes—anyway, he only lets himself really look maybe once or twice an hour. Rule of thumb.

Despite his protestations, Brad has actually been helping Ray with his broken arm pretty much constantly, even though he complains the entire time. But when Ray’d offered to get Poke or Hasser to help instead, Brad had frowned, said neither could be trusted to keep Ray up to Brad’s exacting standards, and continued manhandling Ray around. He helped Ray into his shirts, laced his boots for him, tied his cravat.

That morning, Brad had tipped up Ray’s neck, eyes intent, rubbing in lather and foam, and then he’d traced the skin, smooth razor strokes, cool and shivery. Ray had screwed his eyes shut and clenched his one good fist and wondered darkly at himself. If he actually came in his trousers from Brad scraping at his face with a blade, Ray was going to bash his own head in against the wall. Put himself out of his misery. Fuck, it’d just been... Brad’s careful hands, Ray’s pulse beneath them. Brad touching him. Fuck.

“Look,” Ray says, rubbing at his eye with the heel of his palm. “Forget it. I’ll just not dance. I’ll steal the dessert platters and hide under the table with them, sneak out after an hour and go get drunk at the saloon or something. Surely London has saloons to go with all this fucking posh twaddle, right? It’ll be fine.”

“Now, Raymond, as your lieutenant, I’m responsible for ensuring that you make a good showing,” Brad says, and shucks off his jacket. He’s in his shirt-sleeves now, and Ray can see the hollow of his throat, golden pale and gleaming in the sunshine. “It’s for the honor of the entire crew. Anyway, you shouldn’t be going to the saloons so often. It’s setting a bad example for the younger officers.”

Ray glares at him darkly; he'll go to the saloons all he damned well wants. Brad does himself, often enough. “Don’t you have some prime article just panting to show up on your arm? I thought you and Elizabeth Lawton were still tupping. She’s a goer, she’ll want to dance with you. Go hassle her and leave me to my well-earned convalescence, Bradley. Don’t you know I was injured in the line of duty?”

Brad waves a hand dismissively. “She’d read too much into it,” he says, shrugging. “Too much trouble. Her mother’s already trying to force me to ask her hand.” Which was saying a lot, Ray thought moodily. Generally, respectable ladies from town frowned on their bonnie lasses taking a no-account aviator for a husband. But when the aviator looked like Brad and had Brad’s breeding, well. Exceptions seemed to be made. Unfortunately for them, Brad had a lot of opinions on the institution of marriage, and most of them were rather… negative. Ray can’t deny being a bit selfishly pleased by this, by the thought that he’ll likely have Brad to himself for the rest of his life, besides the occasional tumbles with random buxom passersby.

“Besides,” Brad smirks. “Watching you dance promises to be _far_ more entertaining.”

“I beg your pardon,” Ray tries, scrambling up some outrage, though it sounds hollow even to his own ears. But he’s not going to dance, dammit. He’s not a dancer. He’s got some pride left, somewhere. If he looks very hard, surely he’ll find it. “I am not your trained dog to trot out around the posh London bigwigs for your amusement.”

“No, dogs are more loyal, faithful, and less likely to stick their dicks into some of the places you do.” Ray would be more offended, but he’s pretty sure Brad’s just taking the piss. The only action Ray’s seen lately, if any, has been his own right hand. Which is now out of commission. His life is just that fantastic. And even before that, it wasn’t like his life was a whirlwind of sexual encounters. He went down to the saloons for gossip, booze, and music, a chance to relax.

Sure, there’d been an occasional quick fumble with Joseph, if he really just couldn’t stand himself any longer. And, well, he’d had a few tumbles with a fellow aviator over the years, John Granby, which was always fun. Not what he wanted, but fun. Anyway, it didn’t really signify. Granby’d been transferred over to Temeraire’s crew and was now head over heels in love with Captain Laurence, if Ray was any judge of falling for blonde, blue-eyed officers. Which, sadly, he was.

The point is, he certainly isn’t getting up to the numerous acrobatic and more excitingly illegal acts Brad seems to think he is, but then, it’s not like Ray really wants to correct him.

“Come on, Person, we don’t have all day.”

“All day to do what?” Ray asks, exasperated, and then, “Oh. Oh, fuck no. You can’t be serious.”

“I am an excellent teacher, Ray.” Brad smirks, and holds open his arms invitingly. Then he shakes his hips, a little shimmy that is totally ridiculous and somehow also spine-meltingly hot. Ray stares at him in horror. “Trust me.”

“Okay, for one thing, I won’t be dancing with any gigantic seven-foot-tall male lieutenants in London, so this is entirely pointless,” Ray protests, mouth dry. “Also, I’m noticing a decided lack of tits in this scenario.”

“I anticipated that being a difficulty,” Brad says calmly, advancing on Ray, a terrifyingly amused gleam in his eye. “I assure you, I am willing to set aside the trappings of my overwhelming masculinity for a short while in order to teach you how to dance properly. As for the tits, well.” He smiles. “Use that vaunted imagination of yours.”

“You’re gonna let me lead,” Ray says disbelievingly. “You’re going to play the girl.”

“Only for you, darling,” Brad says coquettishly, batting his eyelashes. “And, if you step on my feet, I’ll place my knee in such a way as to ensure you never have children, Corporal Person.” Brad has exceptionally bony knees. Ray instinctively has the urge to cover his family jewels with his free hand, but doesn’t want to show weakness. “Come on, Ray, it’ll be good sport. Dancing isn’t just about frills and showing off one’s wealth and catching a desirable husband, I’ll have you know. It’s about knowing one’s partner, following, anticipating each other’s steps.”

“We already do all that on dragonback,” Ray says, exasperated and fond, and Brad catches his good hand and then Ray can’t say anything at all for fear of squeaking.

“Exactly,” Brad retorts, eyes twinkling. The bastard. He looks incredibly pleased with himself, cheeks pink with the brisk wind. “So you might as well let me teach you how to do it like a proper toff, you addle-pated, jingle-brained, coal-miner’s brat.”

“Oy!” Ray protests, dithering, and then gives in to the inevitable. The girls at the saloon probably don’t know the ballroom dances that would be required, and really, Ray can’t pass this up: Brad Colbert waltzing in imaginary skirts. Though Ray is a bit worried about what will happen when he inevitably steps on Brad’s trotters with his own huge clunky boots. “So, just as a precaution… perhaps we should lose the shoes?”

And that is how Ray Person and Brad Colbert wind up waltzing in their stockings in the dry, dead November grass. It’s one of the strangest things that has ever happened to Ray. Ever. Ray stares at their feet, pale and skinny amidst the tangle of weeds—Brad has oddly dainty ankles. He’s mesmerized by them, flashing a pale one-two step, one-two step.

“You’ll never learn anything if you keep staring at your feet, Ray,” Brad’s voice says, bemused. “It’s not the best way to entertain your partner, either. Not that I’m casting aspersions on your ability to keep your partner satisfied, but…”

“I’ll have you know I have never _once_ left a partner unsatisfied!” Ray says indignantly, looking up, and Brad grins and his eyes are so goddamned blue. The sky and sea are put to shame and Ray needs to look away, now, yesterday. But Brad’s smiling; he’s happy. He’s got Ray’s hand in his, and they’re doing a promenade. A mother-fucking promenade. Brad’s got a bunch of imaginary skirts gathered in his left fist and keeps saying things like: “Such a gentleman,” and “Imagine the décolletage, Ray,” and “Now dip me.”

Ray wants to throw up, he’s so happy, doing this stupid, clunky dance and falling all over the place and laughing. Brad’s at his most charming, all smiles and teasing and compliments draped liberally in insults. And despite Ray's bitching over the ball, he's in just as good a mood himself, really. They've pushed the French back from their shores, they're both still alive, and soon they'll have their own dragon. It's pretty damned exciting, and now Ray has this too, has this moment, this playful, foolish dance.

He’s thinking about how Brad’s got an arm ‘round Ray’s waist, how he smells, clean and fresh and slightly of salt. He’s going to have Brad’s scent on his own skin for the rest of the afternoon. Understandably his concentration suffers a bit.

“You’ll do better when you stop thinking about the steps and just move with me,” Brad says, hobbling a few steps away and glaring reproachfully. “My poor feet, Raymond. You’re such a cad.”

“Well, if you’d just let me goddamned look where I’m—oh, fine, _sorry_ ,” he says, when Brad gives him a mock-wounded look. He takes a moment to draw himself up, get in character, and then bows.

“I’ll make it up to you, my Lady,” Ray says in his best drawling, smarmy Brad Colbert voice. “Strings of pearls the size of each of your perfect, pearlescent tits.” He makes an accompanying hand gesture, the universal signal for enormous melons—he’s slightly hampered by the broken wrist, but from Brad’s choked laugh, he’s done well enough. “What next, dearheart?” he clutches his hands to his chest and gets down on one knee in the dirt. Brad is struggling to keep a straight face, but a tiny smile keeps breaking through, and it’s making Ray feel stupid and giddy. “Strings of sapphires to match your eyes?” Ray implores in a dewy voice. “No, no stone could attain that hue perfected in your own orbs. Gold the color of your hair? It’d look dull, next to the radiance of your locks. Sweet red rubies, the color of your—”

“Enough!” Brad says, covering his hands with his eyes. “Raymond, get off the goddamned ground. I know you. You’re about to progress to less savory anatomical descriptions. I can only imagine. Pink tourmalines the exact shade of my rosy arsehole?”

“Pink,” Ray scoffs. “You do think highly of yourself. Nothing but topaz for you, brother. Ow, hey! I’m wounded, motherfucker! No kicking!”

Brad laughs. He’s so fucking ridiculous sometimes—all stormy-eyed and solemn and scary as hell during a battle, and then afterwards he helps Ray with his collection of dirty limericks, laughs so hard beer comes out his nose during dinner, collects weird clockwork toys and sextants and old maps. A warrior of the skies, and he’s beside himself with amusement because he managed to topple Ray over on his arse in a patch of dead clovers. What a prick, Ray thinks lovingly, and lets Brad helps him to his feet, brush the grass off his back.

Brad’s humming the waltz again, one-two-three, one-two-three, and Ray furrows his brow in concentration, trying to remember the steps.

“Was it really that terrible?” Brad asks dryly. “You look like you’re pondering your own execution, or reading Shakespeare. Is dancing with me such a trial?”

“Shakespeare’s meant for the stage. The books are dry lifeless tree corpses that’ve been farted on by squids. Reading Shakespeare is the absolute worst,” Ray retorts automatically, because this is a well-worn argument, born of Brad’s countless attempts to increase Ray’s literacy and Ray’s refusal to do so unless it involved actual pantomime and the rest of the barracks performing _The Taming of the Shrew_. Hasser had made a startlingly fantastic Kate, if Ray did say so himself. “And my feet are cold.”

Ray glances back up. Brad’s watching him, smiling, and then he swoops in and they’ve gotten their positions switched. Ray’s tucked in close against Brad’s body, his injured arm between them, cradled protectively. Brad’s leading him and somehow Ray’s feet are following his, automatic and graceful.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I think I dance better as the woman in this scenario.”

“You dance better when you stop thinking about your feet and just follow the music,” Brad says archly, and Ray rolls his eyes.

“There _is_ no music.”

“Raymond, you have no poetry in your soul,” Brad sighs, and begins to hum again.

“I don’t even want to know,” a voice interrupts dryly, and Brad spins Ray with a flourish that makes his injured arm ache.

“Poke!” Ray says cheerfully, wriggling an arm loose and waving. “I didn’t know Marisol let you free evenings. Would you care to join this dance? Want to cut in?”

Espera makes a complicated face which Ray translates as a mix of annoyance at the nickname, resigned bemusement at the dancing, and helpless fondness at the merest mention of Marisol’s name. Marisol is a two month-old Anglewing, and if Ray is any authority of the subject—which he is, he’s seen countless dragonets and dragons over the years—Marisol is going to be unparalleled for agility in the air. She’s got a gorgeously proportioned wingspan. He’d told Espera as much and had been completely alarmed when Espera’d fucking beamed at him in response. Espera doesn’t beam, especially not at Ray. Ray isn’t entirely sure Espera doesn’t loathe him.

“She still put out we won’t let her fight the Frogs yet?” Brad asks, and Ray’s still tucked up close next to him, and Brad doesn’t seem to be inclined to let him go. He’s warm and blocking the chill wind, and Ray’s pretty okay with Brad never releasing him ever, even if this is going to torment Ray’s dreams for possibly the rest of his life.

“We did a patrol run this morning, got her good and tired. She’s too sleepy to complain now,” Espera tells them, smiling. It’s still alarming. Ray subtly tries to put Brad between himself and the terrifyingly cheerful captain. “She’s tucked up in the covert with half a sheep, snoring.”

“Awww, half-masticated livestock,” Ray coos. “Adorable.” Brad elbows him, which is unfair. Ray was being serious.

“How can we help you, then, Captain?”

“I’ll never get tired of hearing you white boys call me captain,” Espera says reflectively, and Ray tunes out the rest, because it’s one of fifty diatribes he’s already heard a thousand times on the evils of imperialism and the innate inferiority of the British way of life, which Poke still leads because secretly he’s addicted to tea and newspapers and fine brandies and would hate it if he and his mother (a native from the Americas who wound up, through a series of increasingly improbable and yet inevitable events, as a British Longwing captain) were actually returned to Florida or Santa Rico, or wherever it is Espera’s claiming he’s from today. Espera leads a complicated, disgruntled existence, from what Ray can tell.

“Thought I’d come spread the good news. They’ve got an egg of Obversaria’s set aside for you, Colbert. Marisol’s little sister, man. Should hatch in a couple months.”

Brad’s gone still, his eyes wide and blinking. Ray gives him a look, and when Brad still doesn’t say anything, Ray fills in the silence, says, “Fuck, that’s amazing. Anglewings are the best, they’ve got way more applications in the field that we use them for, I think. You should never discount maneuverability and stealth as assets.”

“Damn straight, brother,” Espera agrees, and pounds Ray on the back. Ray bites his tongue on an exclamation—he has a fucking broken arm here, Christ. “We don’t need no showy Imperials and heavyweights to get the job done, not all the time, anyway. Anyway, that’s the latest, Brad. You’ll be shipped off to Loch Laggan with us after the ball—you never know with those eggs, sometimes they set to cracking early, and you want to be there when they do. Oh, and lucky us, command wants you to do them a favor and take your sidekick with you when you go. He’ll be grounded with that arm and driving everyone here in Dover to murder, otherwise.”

Ray scrunches up his face into a ‘Who, me?’ expression, and Brad smiles. “I’ll keep Ray out of trouble,” he says. “You worry about that Marisol of yours.”

Espera shakes his head and turns to go, calls over his shoulder. “And cut out the dancing! You’re scaring the civilians.”

“Oh, they can’t see who we are from down there,” Ray says, huffing. “Typical fucking Poke exaggeration, classic,” but Brad’s already moved away.

“The commander probably wants to speak with me,” he says, still sounding strangely distant as he shoves his boots on and starts rearranging himself. Within seconds he looks impeccable. You’d never guess he’d been dancing in his stocking feet with his corporal. Ray squints at him, but Brad’s silhouetted against the sun, probably on purpose, the shifty, tactical bastard, and Ray can’t see his face. “I’ll see you at dinner, Ray.” He pauses. “Don’t take this opportunity to go raid Charlotte’s closet for skirts. You’d make a hideous woman. You’ll attend the ball in trousers.”

How had Brad known? “Dammit,” Ray says, and thinks maybe Brad smiles before heading off down the hill. “It worked for Shakespeare!” he hollers after him, and Brad makes a rude hand gesture before disappearing into the officer’s quarters.

***

_London, December 1805_

Ray should have known she’d be there. Of course she would be. The aviators are, for once, the toast of the town, the belles of the ball. Everyone stops them in the street at the sight of their kelly green coats, thanks them profusely for their services to the crown. It’s the event of the season, this ball. Of course Lady Constance Colbert, now Duchess of Devonshire, would make an appearance.

Ray’s just catching his breath after a dance with Captain Roland—she’s about as good at dancing as he is, and he was embarrassingly tongue-tied the entire time, even as she threw back her head and laughed when they knocked over a more staid waltzing couple and sent them sprawling on the marble floor. Stafford pounded him on the back after, impressed Ray had the bollocks to ask Roland at all, and Ray's flushed with success and breathless from the speed they'd been moving at. He’s loosening his cravat and tossing back a flute of champagne when he finally sees Brad amidst the press of people, and there's a woman who can only be his mother standing beside him.

She is exquisite. Not a patch on Captain Roland, with her quick smile and booming laugh, but for a dainty useless aristocrat, she cannot be faulted. He’d rather her curls be obnoxiously powdered, her flesh be sagged and wrinkled and spotted with age. But she’s aged gracefully and charmingly, not in her first flush of youth, but still beautiful. She has Brad’s bright blonde hair, his high cheekbones and perfect smirk, and she’s leaning in on her son’s arm and laughing prettily. Brad’s standing very straight and tall and his eyes are blank and unfocused. Ray knows that look, knows he’s looking through the room, looking through the walls, seeing another place entirely.

Brad has visited his mother six times since he arrived at the Corps, and he always left to meet her with a slight, irrepressible bounce in his step, and returned blank and sharp-tongued, arms full of fine clothes and books. They’ve never talked about his family since that first hideously awkward conversation, not really. Ray jokes, and Brad drawls back, icy and amused, and it helps make it less real, almost. More like something funny, something that doesn’t matter. Inconsequential. To hell with Brad’s mother and her new husband and her new estate that doesn’t have room for a son with rough hands and gunpowder streaking his hair and a sea captain’s eyes. Brad’s going to have his own dragon, and he’s got the Corps eating out of his hand. He’s got Ray. He doesn’t need these starched, gutless gentry fuckers.

Ray sees Brad flinch at something his mother’s said. He goes stiff, like he’s been wounded, and Ray doesn’t even think about it; he’s already setting his champagne flute down and making his way across the room.

“Well, hell-o,” Ray says in his coarsest, coal-mining accent, interrupting whatever conversation they’d been having, overly loud and smiling sunnily. He takes her hand, kisses it, imagines spitting in her pretty, powdered face. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. I’m Corporal Ray Person, your bonny boy’s bosom companion, and I can’t _believe_ he’s been hiding you away for so long. What a cad, am I right?” She stares at him, speechless, mouth open. A filthy aviator brat is touching her. Ray turns up the charm, leans in conspiratorially. “And what a _smashing_ rig you’ve got on, my lady. Very… pink. It goes _so_ well with your—” and then Brad’s dragging him bodily away before he can finish the sentence or ask the wonderful woman to dance and then tip her out a window, or into a fountain, or against a waiter bearing a tray of red wine.

“What,” Ray protests, grinning. “I was just going to say it matched the color in her cheeks. You’re a suspicious fucker, Colbert.”

“ _Ray_ ,” Brad says, and he looks half scandalized and half like he’s about to burst into laughter. “That wasn’t necessary.”

“I bet she’s gone to go hide in the powder room and wash her hands with lye,” Ray says gleefully. “Your mother’s a bitch, Brad. Hey, where are we going?” He grins, lowers his voice and waggles his eyebrows. “Captain Colbert, is this your way of asking me to dance? You soft touch, you. Oh, hey, did you see me waltzing earlier? Total disaster; Roland and I stunned the Earl of Leicester, literally, I think. It was quite the sensation, so thanks awfully for the lessons. They worked out swell.”

“We are going to the dessert table,” Brad tells him, hand warm and firm on Ray’s upper arm. “And I am going to stuff your face with pastry so that you don’t get either of us hanged for scandalizing a peer of the realm with your flapping tongue.”

“Oh, Captain Colbert, you’re so masterful,” Ray coos, and lets himself be led off. Now that Brad’s away from that harlot, he’s smiling again, and Ray’s immediately relaxed, feels better about the world entirely. “Do you think there’ll be any clotted cream? I _love_ clotted cream.”

Brad distracts the waiter and they manage to abscond with an entire tray of chocolate tarts, some weird and ironically French desserts--puff pastries stuffed with cream and all stacked in a pyramid of deliciousness; Ray is willing to be reconciled to French cooking after he’s tasted them—along with brandied apples and several saucers of clotted cream. Ray snags a bottle of champagne from a passing waiter, and they’re set.

They stagger outside to the courtyard with their bounty and set themselves up next to a pillar beneath the stars. The dragons are there listening to the musicians play and are talking amongst themselves, low and excited. Their rumbling voices make Ray feel at home, even in this strange gray city where he can still hear the clatter of carriages and carts late into the night, where everything is a whirl of foreign manners and intricate behavior and false faces. Now Ray feels full of warmth and good food and even the ache in his arm seems very distant.

“Thought you said there’d be decent music here,” he says drowsily, kicking Brad in the ankle.

“These are the finest violinists in the city, you backwards, beetle-browed sot. I suppose you think you can do better because you’ve convinced a bevy of whores to let you strum their instruments in a public alehouse, but this, Raymond, is how civilized people purport themselves.”

“Whorehouses have the best music,” Ray says dreamily, and then scowls at his arm. “Fuck civilization, anyway. Civilization is full of more savages in waistcoats and hoop skirts than you’ll ever find in a farming town or a forest. And, I’ll have you know, I could do better than this bloody caterwauling twaddle any fucking day, if only my arm wasn’t such a fucking mess.”

“And whose fault is that?” Ray starts to open his mouth and Brad sighs loudly, shakes his head, then steals what remains of a tart from Ray’s good hand. “Let’s not start up again about who’s to blame for your idiocy. This is meant to be a cheerful occasion.” Ray sticks out his tongue and Brad nobly ignores it. “Let’s strike an accord. I’ll keep you informed as to any actions I can possibly foresee myself taking, and will also take up soothsaying and crystal-gazing if that’ll get you to shut your bloody mouth for more than four seconds a day, and _you_ will take greater care with your feet when you land.”

“You’re going to make me practice leaping about, aren’t you,” Ray states moodily, but he can’t quite keep the smile from his voice.

“Additional dancing lessons might help, you know,” Brad muses evilly, and Ray makes a raspberry noise of disdain. He snags the bottle back, drains the dregs, sweet and flat, and staggers to his feet.

“I’ll show _you_ some fucking dancing,” he says, and goes to see if he can bully the city’s finest violists into playing an Irish sea shanty.

He gets in a spot of trouble later for causing structural damage to the nearby buildings when he leads several of the dragons in an impromptu round dance to the tune of ‘Ten Pound Lass,’ but Brad’s laughing so hard there are actual tears streaming from his eyes, so Ray doesn’t much mind.

***

_Loch Laggan, March 1806_

“Hey, Brad, Poke was being a prick this morning, probably ‘cause I keep calling him Poke, but c’mon. He seems to think I’m too irresponsible, but I mean, I’m totally responsible, that’s bullshit. I am going to be your first lieutenant, right? C’mon. C’monnn, Brad. Say it. I know I am, I just want you to say it. Brad!”

“Not if you don’t shut the hell up, Christ,” Brad grates out, and Ray whoops, splashes water over Brad in a glittering arc. He fucking _loves_ Loch Laggan, loves the heat of the steam baths and the way he gets to see Brad Colbert topless all the time and how the clouds of steam hide any number of sins. He misses the dirty streets of Dover, the music halls and the booze, but here there are baby dragons all over the place, and fucking hot baths whenever he wants, and Brad’s here. Brad’s going to be his captain, and they’re gonna have a dragon.

“You’re lucky you’re a fucking genius with maneuvers,” Brad grumbles. “Otherwise I’d be drowning you right now.” As it is, he still shoves Ray’s head under the water, wrestles him down, and okay, fuck, Ray’s officially reached his limit on naked-Brad-time for the afternoon. Slipping out of Brad’s grip before he can do anything stupid, like kiss his future captain, Ray wades over to their towels. He wraps one around his waist and tosses Brad the other, not looking back, trusting Brad to catch it.

“Let’s go say hi to our girl,” he suggests, and pads over on damp eager feet. The eggs are ensconced in niches across the room from the pool, where any aviator that passes through can check on them easily. They’re nestled in rough quilting, and Ray may be biased, but he thinks their egg is far and away superior to the others. She’s beautiful, golden dappled brown with lighter flecks. The shell is hard to the touch, warm, and when Ray puts a hand on it, he can feel a faint stirring within.

“Hey, baby girl,” he croons. “It’s your Ray Ray, come to tell you some stories about how me and Captain Brad defeated the big bad Parnassian in battle, just for you.”

“We don’t know that it’ll be a girl, Person,” Brad growls, coming up behind him, and Ray shoots him a grin.

“Aw, come on, Brad, sometimes you just _know_. Don’t you trust my killer instincts?” He knows Brad does, even though he’s shooting Ray a disbelieving look and flicking damp hair out of his eyes. “Go on, tell her hello.”

“Ray,” Brad says, pained, and sighs and leans over Ray’s shoulder, dripping cool water and Ray shivers, then scolds himself. No dirty thoughts in front of the baby. Ray may be an incurable lech and a bad influence on all and sundry, but even he’s got limits.

“Hi, there,” Brad says, in a low, gentle voice, and places his hand next to Ray’s, their fingers brushing. “Don’t let Ray keep you up, sweetheart. You’ve got growing to do.”

“I’m not keeping her up!” Ray protests, but he lets Brad drag him out of the baths, out into the bitingly cold March air without much more than a token protest. This part of Scotland he does dislike, the cold emptiness, though he admits there’s something appealing about the starkness of it, the wild white winter sky and the bleak black rocks crashing up into it. He’ll never admit it, though. He’s got a reputation to uphold.

Their baby girl is due to hatch any day now, and there’s a round-the-clock watch on her egg. But Brad can’t just sit and stare and wait, mostly because Ray would go bonkers, and secretly Brad would too—there’s only so many hours a person can sit or swim or read fucking poetry or military histories or play cards or whatever. So in the meantime, they’ve been press-ganged into helping train little Marisol, and only spend about half their waking hours staring at eggshell.

Marisol’s still tiny, barely double the size of a Winchester, but it’s good to get familiar with the basics of Anglewing training. Brad and Ray have mostly been serving on Laetificat for the last ten years, with brief stints on Obversaria and Exicidium, so it’s probably for the best they’re getting a refresher course in how to handle middleweights before their As Yet Unnamed girl hatches.

But Ray’s arm is taking way fucking longer than it should to heal, so he’s still on the ground during training. He moaned about it for the first few days, that Brad got to be up in the air while Ray pined for him on the ground below, like a sailor’s wife or some crap, but it turns out to not be so bad. Ray gets to spend the time with Celeritas, the training master at Dover, who just happens to be a dragon, a Yellow Reaper with no captain of his own.

Ray thinks it makes a lot of sense, for all that he knows the non-aviating world would have an enormous tizzy at the very thought of an unharnessed dragon in charge of anything. But they’ve got human training masters at Dover, and from what Ray can tell, Celeritas does a much better job. In between barking out orders to the dragonets, he and Ray discuss training methodology and the theories behind different formations and the strengths of various breeds compared to others. He’s a good conversationalist, and willing to talk through the maneuvers with Ray while they watch the brightly colored wings wheeling through the sky above.

Ray does sort of suspect Celeritas occasionally wants to squash him like a particularly annoying insect, though. Ray isn’t especially good at keeping what he’s thinking inside his head, and a lot of what’s inside his head isn’t fit for polite company, let alone for superior officers that outweigh him by a good twelve tons. But all told, the guy’s pretty patient, and when he growls at Ray to shut up about arranging a draconic cabaret act, Ray shuts up.

“I think he likes you,” Brad muses later. “If you’d asked me about draconic castratos and operas, I’d have stepped on you, personally.”

“Hush,” Ray says, frowning at their egg. “Let’s not fight in front of the baby.”

“Were you dropped on your head as a child?” Brad inquires, dealing a new hand of cards. “I know you were when you were fifteen, I was there. I’m just wondering if the damage was more extensive than I was aware of.”

“You’re hilarious,” Ray says, and frowns at his cards. “You wouldn’t really step on me, would you, Brad?”

“If you go on about starting up a line of pornographic woodcuts marketed towards dragons again, I’ll commission someone to do it for me,” Brad assures him. Ray’s cut off mid-protest by Brad’s eyes suddenly going sharp and battle-gray. Ray feels his body respond immediately, his hand leaping for his pistol before he realizes the situation’s inappropriate, and also that they’re both dressed for the baths, towels knotted at their side; his pistol is safe and dry up in the barracks above.

Brad says simply, “She’s hatching.”

Ray replies in a daze, the cards falling from his fingers: “You do think she’s going to be a girl! I fucking knew it.” Brad spares him a moment to glare before calling for assistance.

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we,” he says, snippily, just as the room fills with excited chatter and Ray’s opportunity to snark back is lost. The next couple minutes are a swarm of excited staff and aviators filling the chamber, moving the gently rocking egg out into the open. Everyone’s watching with a hushed, festival air. Someone’s brought them their clothes, thankfully, so Ray’s shrugged half into his coat, his shirt buttoned up haphazardly. Brad only has one boot on, but he’s managing to look far more put together than Ray. Ray would be annoyed, but he’s too busy trying not to vibrate out of his own skin with excitement. She’s hatching, she’s almost here.

The next few minutes pass in a tense flurry of the egg rocking once or twice. There is a slight crack near the very top of the egg. Another minute passes and the egg twitches minutely.

“Well,” Ray says into the echoing silence. “This is a bit dull.”

“Quiet, you,” Brad retorts out of the corner of his mouth.

“I’m just saying, we could get the cards out again.”

“Is nothing sacred to you, Person?” Poke asks, exasperated, and Ray’s interrupted in the midst of enumerating the many things he does hold sacred, which include a perfect mug of Talbot’s ale, a clear morning sky viewed from the back of a dragon, and Brad’s trim waist and lean hips. Hopefully he wouldn’t have said that last out loud, but anyway, it’s all thrust out of his head by the shell giving an enormous crack and the dragonet emerging, shaking her head furiously and flapping her damp wings. She’s beautiful. She has golden eyes.

“Brad,” Ray breathes, and feels Brad’s hand brush against his.

The dragonet is nosing herself curiously, turning in a clumsy circle and tripping over on her own wings, and Ray can’t help but laugh. She’s wonderful. He wonders what Brad will name her; he’s been remarkably reluctant to discuss it with Ray. Ray guesses he really does hold some things sacred, because he’s pretty content to be surprised by this.

The dragonet looks up at Ray’s laugh and startles, comically surprised to discover she’s surrounded by people. She snorts inelegantly, then cocks her head and stumbles forward, peering at the nearest face. Ray nudges Brad towards her. Brad has the harness in his hands, miniature and perfect, but he’s biting his lip and he’s not moving.

“Brad!” Ray hisses, and Brad blinks at him. “What are you doing!”

“Oh,” says the dragonet, sounding relieved. She drops down from her hind legs, where she’d been standing and peering quizzically at Hasser’s face and trots over to them quickly, her tiny talons clicking on the stone. “There you are!”

“What?” Ray says, and Brad’s smiling. Why is Brad smiling? And then the dragonet is butting against his knee and Ray’s stomach is plummeting, his heart shooting somewhere down in the vicinity of his feet, or maybe further down, down into hell itself.

“Ray,” the dragonet says, happily, and this has all gone wrong, terribly, terribly, horribly wrong, and there’s a hush over the room again, and _why is Brad smiling at him_?

“Bravo, Ray,” Brad says quietly, and hands him the harness. Ray gapes at him.

“Oh, hello, Brad,” the dragonet says, but she seems content to stay sitting on Ray’s foot. She’s small and perfect, barely larger than a cat.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Brad says cheerfully, and the bloody bastard is beaming, now. Ray has fallen through a rabbithole into Faerie, or he’s taken a dram of absinthe without remembering, or he’s slipped and hit his head and this is all a fever dream.

“What the fucking fuck,” Ray says feebly, and the dragonet’s eyes go large and liquid and worried, and he feels like a heel. Whatever else is happening, he can’t let her think he doesn’t want her.

“It’s not—you were meant to—” he starts helplessly, and then swallows. He wants her. He can’t have her. “Brad’s supposed to be your captain. You don’t want me.”

“What? Of course I do. I decided long ago. You are being quite stupid,” the dragonet says. Somewhere beyond the shock and ringing in his ears, Ray can hear Poke laughing. “But I do not mind, I like you anyway. You tell good stories. May I have a name now, please?”

A name. Ray blinks helplessly. Brad’s just smirking at him, totally useless. When this is all over Ray is going to smash his face with a hammer, or a rock, or a boot. Something blunt and heavy. But Ray’s slow-witted and right now his brain’s totally blank. He can’t look away from the dragonet’s small, pointed face. She’s beginning to seem a bit uncertain, her wings drooping. She’s drawing in on herself, curling up. Ray drops to his knees automatically and gathers her in his good arm, buries his face in her warm, damp neck. She immediately brightens, nuzzling him and humming happily, a sweet vibrating thrum. Ray tries to gather his scattered thoughts, keeps tripping on the reality of her, smelling milky and alive in his arms.

“Ray,” Brad prompts, nudging Ray with a booted toe. “Ray, a name.”

A name, fuck. He has no name picked out, and his mind is totally fucking blank, and somehow he picks a word out of the chaos that is his brain at the moment and blurts it out: “Bravo.”

“Bravo,” the dragonet says, considering, flapping her little wings. “Yes. That’s a good name. I quite like Sweetheart, too, though.”

“No, no,” Brad interjects, sounding alarmed. “Bravo is—let’s stick with Bravo.”

“Alright,” the dragonet—Bravo—says agreeably. She bites Ray’s ear gently and he yelps. “Ray, I am hungry.”

“Falling behind on your duties already, Captain,” Brad says smugly, and oh, he is going to get it _so hard_ later, but first Ray has to take the tray of freshly sliced lamb and calf meat and offer the first piece to Bravo with shaking hands. She squeals happily and lunges for it, and Ray gets her settled in her harness as she gorges herself, telling her the whole time how lovely she is, how they’ll go flying later, how he’ll show her everything. He feels full of light and queerly hollow, echoing and dazed at the same time, and all the while Brad’s hand is on his shoulder, anchoring him.

“You are in so much trouble,” he says lowly as Bravo settles in to sleep, stuffed to the metaphorical gills and streaked with gore. “You have no idea.”

“You’re welcome,” Brad retorts cheerfully, because he’s an idiot and doesn’t know death when it’s staring him in the face. “She’s beautiful, Ray. Do I get to be your first lieutenant?”

“You get to be my first _murder victim_ ,” Ray starts, but then Bravo shifts in his lap and he’s wholly distracted with making sure she settles. Brad sinks down beside him, reaches out and runs a finger along the gleaming length of Bravo’s neck. Bravo lets out a loud burp; she has great volume and depth for such a tiny thing. Ray pats her proudly, even as his brain is unraveling and his eyes can only see Brad, dim in the torchlight of the cavern.

He’s dimly aware of the chamber emptying, of people saying congratulations in strangled tones, but Brad’s there through it all, and finally it’s just the two of them, the three of them. Ray’s finally able to bitch Brad out, if he wants to—and he _does_ — if only he could find the words, figure out what’s going on.

“What the hell was that, Brad,” Ray says a little hysterically after a moment, throat tight. He’s, fuck, he can’t be—he has Bravo. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but the thought of giving her up now is like trying to imagine giving up a limb or a lung. “I don’t—I shouldn’t—”

“If there’s any man in the Corps that would make a better captain than you, I haven’t met them yet,” Brad says immediately, eyes bright, like he’s been just waiting for Ray to say something. Typical, he’s got an argument all planned out, probably with footnotes, while Ray’s flopping around like a landed fish, trying to figure out where all the water’s gone. “You’re not suited for polite company, but you’re a good man, the best man. I thought she might choose you. I hoped she would.”

Ray flushes. “Brad, you don’t—promotions, they don’t just come along! When are you going to get a chance at an egg again? You might not, you might not ever, and you thought I’d _want_ to take that from you?” Ray asks, aghast. And they’d be—they’d be separated. Ray tries not to be an overly sentimental twit, but he’s part of Brad’s team, and that’s just how it goes. Brad gets the dragon, Ray gets Brad, what pieces of him he’s allowed, and that’s just that. It’s reality. Ray’s accepted it, he’s fine with it. He doesn’t need his own dragon—but now he has one, has her.

“I don’t want another chance at an egg,” Brad says contentedly, tickling Bravo’s chin. She purrs and stretches sleepily, and Ray feels himself going all gooey and melty and stupid with love for her, for her tiny perfect limbs and delicate wings and the way her tail curls in a dainty spiral around his wrist.

“You’re insane,” Ray says after a moment, trying to control his breathing. “I don’t understand you at all. Don’t you want her?”

“Never as much as you did,” Brad replies, looking obnoxiously pleased with himself. He’s very close, so close his breath is stirring Ray’s hair. “Not that she’s not fantastic, mind you. I knew you’d be upset at first. But this—it’ll work better this way, Ray. Trust me.”

“But I don’t want to be a captain!” Ray protests lowly, panic crawling up his throat. He’s not cut out for command. He is not a commander. He is going to ruin everything and England is going to go up in flames and Bravo is going to be captured by the sodding French and, and—

“Breathe, idiot, that’s why I’m here,” Brad interrupts, flicking Ray between the eyes. Ray hates him so much. “We’ll do it together.”

“The Corps doesn’t work like that,” Ray protests, stroking Bravo’s head and feeling stupidly hopeful, stupidly believing.

“Maybe not,” Brad says, with a crooked smile. He looks happy, Ray realizes. The fucking lunatic, he looks happy. “But we do.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

_Loch Laggan, May, 1806_

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” Celeritas says, and he has the ‘I want to squash you like a bug but I’m too staid and dignified’ look on his face again. “ _What_ is it you want permission for?”

Ray bounces on his heels. “To create an elite task force of Anglewing fighters that patrol the skies with golden wings of fire and rain down everlasting judgment upon—Ow! Brad!”

“Sir, what my captain is trying to say, in his typical poetic fashion, is that we believe the coincidence of three Anglewings undergoing training at Loch Laggan at this time provides us with a unique opportunity to maximize their maneuvering capabilities and perhaps form a specialized task unit that can be deployed at the discretion of the Corps when necessary.” Which was exactly what Ray had said, Christ. “To that end, we ask if it is possible to pause the traditional training for a three week span, during which we will attempt an excursion to the surrounding countryside.”

Celeritas hums thoughtfully and motions Brad to continue. Brad does, standing at attention before Celeritas with his hands behind his back, ramrod straight. He’s spitting out details of ground cover and hunting experience and weather conditions, and it’s all painfully dry and technical and way less exciting than it had been when he and Ray and Pappy and Poke had hashed it all out earlier.

“He makes it sound so _dull_ ,” Ray whispers incredulously to Bravo, who shushes him, eyes shining. Talk about unfair, it’s practically mutiny. Then Brad steps on his foot again, and Ray swears he must stuff his boots with rocks, there’s no way one man can generate that much pressure per square inch otherwise.

“Captain Espera and Captain Patrick agree with this proposal?”

“Yes, sir, they are on board with the prospective mission, as are the dragonets Marisol and Anima, and, of course, Bravo.”

There is a long, painful pause where Celeritas mulls this over, but Ray knows it’s a done deal. It’s almost impossible not to jump up and down with excitement. It’s early summer and the weather couldn’t be more beautiful, so that’s not an issue. And besides, they’ve gotten a new heavyweight formation in training and Celeritas has his talons full breaking a young Regal Copper-Chequered Nettle breed of some seriously bad habits—like swinging his tail excitedly whenever his formation does a dive. Since his tail is covered with giant spiky barbs, it’s been rather problematic.

Taking the Anglewings out for a week or two will be doing Celeritas a favor, honestly. It’s for the good of the covert—of the _country_. And it’s not like there’s not precedent: everyone knows Temeraire and Laurence set up a special training formation while they were here, and that worked out beautifully in battle. Even if the poor bastard is now being shipped back off to the bloody Chinese, that doesn’t mean the idea itself isn’t sound.

Anyway, Celeritas and Ray are practically brothers by now, after all the time Ray’d spent grounded with him while his arm was mending. Well, not _technically_ brothers, since they’re different species and all—spiritual brothers, maybe, even if Celeritas had once threatened to eat him. Anyway, the point is, Celeritas knows Ray’s got a good solid understanding of formation theory and training tactics to build on, his ‘typical poetic fashion’ of speech aside. Brad is going to get it for that one later. Ray’s going to remember he said that.

“Very well, Lieutenant Colbert, Captain Person.” Ray punches the air in victory. “You have my permission to take with you what supplies and men you see fit. Don’t stray beyond the Hebrides, and be back within the allotted three weeks. We’ll expect a demonstration of this ‘rain of everlasting judgment’ upon your return and, contingent upon the showing of the dragons at that time, make a decision regarding future excursions and training ventures. And Lieutenant Colbert?” They pause in making their bows. “See if you can get Captain Person to consume less coffee while you’re gone.”

Fuck.

“You’ll pry this flask from my cold dead fingers, Lieutenant,” Ray tells Brad as they walk away. Bravo’s already leapt off into the air to find her wingmates and tell them the good news. Brad just smirks at him.

“You _are_ consuming a potentially unhealthy amount, sir,” Brad points out, and Ray scowls. “I’m only looking out for your health.”

“Okay, first off, you know why. I’m trying to go through all your intensely boring ‘Art of War’ books before we get shipped out.” Also, Ray can’t sleep, can’t stop dreaming of all the stupid ways everything could go wrong and be all his fault, and he’s having that damn nightmare again of Brad falling, only now there’s the added fun of cannonballs ripping through Bravo’s wings, and everyone spiraling down down down, and anyway, Ray’d rather just chew coffee beans and read about Alexander the Great and that dick Machiavelli. Brad looks suspicious, like he’s about to protest, so Ray hurries on hastily. “And okay, I know you’re fine with things as they are, and I am too, but I should at least pretend to have a sound background in leadership, right? I mean, what if you get hurt? Bravo and I can’t just fly in circles and tell the men to stop screaming like babies because they miss their lieutenant. And don’t call me sir!”

“Yes, sir,” Brad says, smugly, which on one hand, _infuriating_ , but on the other, at least he’s distracted from the bags beneath Ray’s eyes by being a huge, insubordinate prick. That’s got to count for something.

“Ugh,” Ray says, and runs a hand over his face. “Go—make the men run drills or something.” Brad salutes—how does he make even a salute look insulting?—and Ray stomps off to go tell Pappy and Poke to get their arses in gear.

He only discovers Brad’s somehow switched out his flask of emergency coffee when he takes a swig in the middle of arguing with Poke over whether or not they should be bringing cattle with them—part of the purpose of this expedition is to give the dragonets a feel for living off the land, hunting by stealth, making do with only what they can hunt and scavenge themselves. Ray wants to give them a day to settle, Poke wants to start off as they mean to finish. Ray’s arguing that even if they are sent off on missions into hostile territory, they’ll still be well supplied to begin with, and nearly caps this compelling point by spitting all over Poke’s face.

Tea. His flask is full of tea, and it’s not just tea, it’s chamomile tea. Ray _hates_ chamomile.

“My captaincy is a fucking travesty,” he observes mournfully, staring at the flask in betrayal, and Poke snorts.

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along, scrub, but what can we do. Damn dragons got minds of their own. We’re stuck with your ass.”

Ray’s nearly too disheartened by the lack of stimulants to continue arguing, but thankfully Pappy sides with him on this one—their girls are younger than Marisol by a good six months. They don’t want to push them too hard to start with, and they can always go whole-hog and start off them off from nothing on subsequent missions, if this one goes well. Poke acquiesces, still amused over Brad’s insubordination, so at least Ray’s blatant lack of control over his own crew has some use, if only for buttering people up with the comedy of it all.

Then it’s off to go pack up maps, requisition cattle, requisition drugs to dope the cattle—boring shit that Ray’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be able to delegate. He doesn’t really mind, though. There’s something satisfying about overseeing it all himself, the supplies being packed, the routes being marked out, the harness being cleaned and oiled.

He takes a moment to go hunt down Brad and chew him out for his pickpocketing ways, but it turns out Brad actually is running drills. He’s with Bravo, having the men throw signal flags back and forth, and Ray watches, pleased, from the shadows of the courtyard arch. That’s his girl. She’s practically prancing in place and glowing, she’s so excited, and Brad’s talking to her, hands on his hips, smiling up at her.

Even though this is giving Ray a cozy warm feeling somewhere in the vicinity of his chest that he doesn’t want to examine too closely, or at all, the fact remains that Brad is in public. Ray has a feeling it’ll be detrimental to whatever respect he’s still got from his crew if he goes over right now and whinges about Brad stealing his coffee.

Brad somehow manages to make himself scarce for the rest of the day—he’s always leaving the room just as Ray’s entering, or talking earnestly with a group of cadets, or just generally being elusive and obnoxiously smoke-like.

“You know,” Ray says later that night when he’s finally managed to chase the bastard down. He leans against Brad’s doorframe and assumes his best glower. “I’ve familiarized myself with the command protocols, and I’m pretty sure I can have you horsewhipped. You are aware of that, right? _Horsewhipped_.”

“Now, Ray,” Brad says, and he’s lounging in bed in his shirtsleeves, candle on the nightstand beside him and a book open on his chest. His door had been open; Ray hadn’t even had to pick the lock, so he must have known Ray would be coming, must have been expecting him. Ray has a moment where his vision goes blurry, heart beating strangely—but no. Brad’s not luring him to his room late at night for clandestine fumble. It’s just one more way of dicking Ray over. Ray tries to convince his racing, heated pulse of this and only has marginal success. “You know I’m only following orders.”

“I don’t know how you convinced the fucking _kitchens_ to give me only tea, and I’m not sure I want to. Doris looked way too pleased with herself.” Ray says, edging in the door. “And why do you only follow orders if they don’t come from me?”

“You don’t count,” Brad says comfortably, stretching. His shirt is unbuttoned; Ray can see the skin of his chest, a pale gold in the candlelight. “And we need you alert when we’re in the field. Please note that I said ‘alert’ and not ‘insane.’ When’s the last time you slept?”

“I sleep!” Ray protests. What is he doing here? This can’t end well. “I sleep all the bloody time. And I damn well do count, I’m your fucking captain, you know. I know you know. You say it whenever you want to annoy me, and you do that stupid over-educated drawling thing, and it’s like you’re taking the word and beating me in the face with it.”

“My apologies, Raymond.” Brad’s eyes are glittering. “I didn’t know it bothered you. Also, you’re lying.”

“I hate you,” Ray informs him for the twenty-fifth time that day.

“The feeling’s more than mutual, Ray, I assure you,” Brad informs him, lifting the book. He licks his forefinger and turns a page. Ray wants to lick Brad’s forefinger. He wants to lick Brad everywhere. “I’m reading the works of Robbie Burns, _sir_. Care to join me, or are you just here to protest your unfair treatment by the kitchens?”

“Are you offering me a bedtime story, Brad?” he says, trying to keep his voice cheerful and steady. “Lieutenant, I do believe you’re trying to seduce me. First the kitchen staff, now this. I’m beginning to think your morals are suspect.”

Brad’s eyes do not go dark, it’s a trick of the guttering candlelight. Ray is just shaky from lack of caffeine.

“I promise you, I did not take any liberties with the kitchen staff, Ray. They merely commended me in my thankless, likely futile efforts to make you a more tolerable, less verbally incontinent human being and were kind enough to grant me my one, small request to deny you further fruits of the genus _Coffea_ for the foreseeable future. My morals are as intact as they ever were, which is to say, barely. And, you uneducated degenerate, Robbie Burns wrote poems, not prose, and I doubt you would consider his writings worthy of a bedtime story. Although some passages are perhaps salacious enough to keep your interest, I will admit. At any rate,” he says, finishing up with a grin, pleased with himself. Ray has a minor seizure. “Should you need me to go fetch you a glass of warm milk to assist you in sleeping, I would be more than happy to oblige. Captain.”

It’s the lack of stimulants, it’s causing hallucinations, dangerous ones. Ray’s asleep. He’s dreaming. That wasn’t sultry. Brad calling him Captain was in no way a come on. Pull yourself together, Person. Brad didn’t just lick his lips. Or he did, but it’s just because his lips are dry, or something. And now they’re wet, shining. Red and wet and it has literally been months since Ray’s felt a hand on his dick that wasn’t his own, let alone a mouth. And it’s Brad’s mouth.

“Ray?” Brad says, and Ray realizes he’s been standing there staring like an idiot.

“Nothing!” he stutters, and Brad raises an eyebrow. “No milk, I fucking hate milk. Milk is not necessary. I’ll, um. I’ve got plenty of tea, and I’m going to—” Go hide in my room and jack off and cry into your copy of Herodotus like an infant. “Sleep. Enjoy your poems.”

“See you at dawn, sir,” Brad calls after him, and if he sounds smug and pleased with himself, well, when doesn’t he? It’s Bradley fucking Colbert.

***

_Outer Hebrides, June 1806_

“Holy fucking hell!” Ray whoops. He never gets tired of this, the cold whip of wind against his face, the speed of it almost beyond comprehension. Bravo whoops back to him happily, her voice echoing along the cliffs, magnified and booming. The three dragons are racing through basalt pillars, weaving in and out, faster and faster, wingtips occasionally brushing the waves below.

It’s almost been more a matter of training the aviators than the dragons. Normally Anglewings are held back from peak performance by the limitations of their respective formations, the reduced maneuverability and speed of the heavyweights they fly with. They’ve discovered that three Anglewings working together can achieve maneuvers that are, at first, completely terrifying: steep impossible dives and near-collisions and countless spirals and loops and even long periods spent entirely upside-down, with no discomfort at all on the part of the dragons themselves. The men aboard them, however, are another story.

The first couple days they’d been out, when they’d really given the dragons free rein to play, there’d been a couple incidents amongst the crew. Ray’s sitting pretty up front, though, and the worst of the splatter-effect is taking out the men sitting in the rear-most sectors, so Ray gets to think it’s hilarious. Brad is not so sanguine, having gotten a faceful from Lilley on their first day out. Like Ray says, hilarious.

But people adjusted, thankfully. Ray had secretly been a bit worried, but Brad hasn’t displayed any signs of seasickness thus far. On the contrary, he looks as healthy as he ever has, pink-cheeked from the wind and bright-eyed, happy. It’s distracting, but Ray’s doing his best not to ogle him too often. They don’t need one of their captains ruining everything by mooning all over the place and then falling off to his death when his first lieutenant stretches and exposes a strip of perfect, muscled stomach.

Motion sickness and momentary episodes of blinding lust aside, they’re doing good work out here, have gotten a hell of a lot done in under three weeks. Their dragons will be nearly impossible to hit in a battle, Ray is pretty sure: no one will be able to get a good enough lock on them to board, let alone to shoot at them with any degree of accuracy. And really, it’s the dragons doing all the hard work. The captains have been passing on general messages, like to head for that wicked nasty looking island with all the spiky pillars and fog and crashing waves, but the girls decide for themselves how to get there, spiraling around each other in a dizzying tangle of wings and tails. It seems impossible, seems like they should be crashing together, bashing into one another, but they never do, not once. It’s beautiful, and dizzying, and for their enemies, deadly.

Well. It will be eventually, anyway, once they’re actually confronting enemies instead of marked targets and clay pigeons. And once they’ve perfected their new skills, too, Ray supposes. The aviators are having to learn entirely new ways of flashing signal flags—ones that can be seen and distinguished at top speed—and of dropping bombs. Every movement has to be perfectly timed and synchronized not only with the movement of their own dragon, but of the two others. They can’t afford to make mistakes, not ones that might result in friendly fire, and so they drill constantly. Ray’s even heard the younger ensigns muttering the signal patterns in their sleep.

Brad loves this work as much as Ray does, Ray can tell. He’s in his element, barking out orders, moving amongst the men, dropping bits of advice salted with good-natured insults. The crew bitches and moans, but they all love it too, even despite having to relearn basic crap like signal flags and shooting protocols. It feels good after all the boring staid formation drills back at the covert, good to be out in the fresh air, to be doing something real, something strenuous and challenging.

Ray’s back with the riflemen now—he doesn’t want them to have to learn things he can’t do himself. His second lieutenant Garza is firing off clay discs, and the riflemen are taking them out in a spray of bullets, timed between wingbeats. They’d spent the first week using blanks and bombs composed solely of sacks of ash, but now they’re using live ammunition and so far no one’s hit a dragon by mistake. Which is good, since Ray’s vowed to dump anyone that does off dragonback and into oblivion, and Brad’s even backing him up for once.

“Hoo-fucking-rah!” Hasser whoops back giddily as Bravo and Anima and Marisol backwing all at the same time, perfectly in tune with each other, wingtips skimming the waves and sending up a fine mist of salt water.

“Having a good time, Corporal?” Ray grins, wiping down his rifle with quick, steady fingers. He’s still using blanks—he’s a good shot, but he’s a bit out of practice and he hasn’t been spending as much time back here adjusting to the new flight patterns as these men have. He’d much rather his pride take a hit here than his girl, so he’s manned up and admitted his inferiority.

“Damn straight, sir. The best,” Hasser says, beaming at him. Ray thinks on his better days that he should just stop pining for Brad’s snotty, perfect ass and set about seducing Walt in earnest. Walt’s got big brilliant blue eyes and a square jaw and a wicked streak underlining his sweet disposition. It’s fun as hell teasing him. Plus, he’s probably the best marksman in the Corps, and Ray’s always been attracted to blonde, blue-eyed geniuses.

“Days like this,” Ray says meditatively, knocking a clay pigeon out of the air and missing the next three entirely. “I swear to Christ, flying is almost better than sex.” And it is. Everything’s right in his world at the moment, the sunshine fizzing in his veins like the bubbles in champagne and the crisp summer wind cradling his entire body. It’s like being fondled by the sky. “You ever have better sex than this, Hasser? I mean, really, really good fellatio comes close. You know the kind, where it’s all sloppy and wet and noisy? Yeah, that’s the stuff. Still, I can’t say I’ve ever bedded a whore that’s better than being in the air on a fine fucking day like this one.”

Hasser is flushing bright red, biting his lower lip. It’s damned cute, and Ray’s pretty sure Hasser would go for a no-strings-attached blowjob in camp tonight, if Ray really wanted to follow up on it, except then a hand comes down hard on Ray’s shoulder. Ray jumps, nearly dropping his gun and losing it to the depths of the Atlantic below.

“Goddammit, Brad,” he swears, chest oddly tight all of a sudden.

“Sir, I had no idea you were so incompetent in the bedroom,” Brad says from behind him, a slight edge to his voice. Hasser snickers and Ray reminds himself to dump something prickly in the little bastard’s bedroll later. No blowjob for him, not that Ray was seriously considering it anyway. Damned command structure. “Not that I’m surprised you’re unaware of this sir, since I doubt you’ve dipped your prick in anything worthy of the term ‘woman’ or even human, but I’ve personally found nothing beats a day of good, hard fucking, not even flying.” He pauses consideringly, then says, “I will allow that today is in fact an exceptionally superior day for it, however.”

“For fucking or for flying, sir?” Stafford asks, sniggering, and Ray sighs.

“Ha ha, Lieutenant Colbert, way to go and ruin the poetry of the moment,” he says, handing Christeson back his rifle and glaring at his first officer. “Walt and I were just engaging in some friendly male bonding over the nearly sexual satisfaction we take from our jobs, and you have to swan in all literal-minded, spreading filthy lies about your commanding officer. You’re lucky I love you so much.”

“I’m touched, sir,” Brad drawls. “But if you’re done playing with the children, Bravo and I need you up front.”

“Oooh,” chorus Lilley and Stafford, and Ray crosses his eyes at them and sticks out his tongue.

“Play nice, infants, or Daddy’ll come back and paddle your dainty rear-ends. Good luck keeping these halfwits in line, Hasser.”

“I’ll do my best, Captain,” Hasser says, saluting, and it’s a proper salute despite the twinkle of amusement in his big, adorable blue eyes. Ray wants to point this out to Brad, maybe see if he wants to take notes on how not to be an insubordinate tosser, but Brad’s already gone. If it was possible to stomp while swarming across a net of harnesses, Brad would be doing it, Ray’s pretty sure. He sighs and follows for what is undoubtedly going to be a lecture on corrupting the morals of their youthful crew.

Brad’s waiting for him up by the captain’s post, sitting cross-legged and looking altogether too amused with himself.

“Walt Hasser?” he asks dryly when Ray flops down. “Really, Raymond? I’m not sure his testicles have even dropped yet.”

“Did you just call me up here to be a jealous strumpet, or do you actually have something you want to tell me, darling?” Ray bats his lashes at Brad and then takes a swig from his flask of tea. At least it’s good strong English tea this time, not bloody useless flowery bullshit. Even the lack of coffee and Brad’s pissy, insubordinate ways can’t ruin his mood today. It’s too gorgeous out, everything’s going too well.

“We’ll be heading back to Loch Laggan tomorrow,” Brad says, all seriousness now. He spreads out a map over Ray’s knees, expertly holding the thick paper down against the wind. “I believe we should make early camp here, at Uig Bay, practice another bit of reconnaissance with the villagers before we bed down for the night. It’s been a long day’s flight back over the mountains to the covert, and everyone’s overworked. We’ll want to be well rested for the return journey.”

“Agreed,” Ray says, cocking his head at Brad. Brad knows Ray trusts his opinion on this — he hadn’t needed to call Ray up here to verify it. Maybe he really is jealous of Walt after all. Actually, he’s been hovering a lot lately, leaning against Ray’s shoulder, letting their arms press together, kicking his feet against Ray’s when they’re all sitting around the campfire at night.

It’s driving Ray a bit crazy, but he’s been trying not to comment on it like he usually would. If he does, Brad might stop, for one thing. And anyway, if he says something, it’ll wind up having all been his head, all imagination. He’s seen the prime articles Brad sleeps with, all long legs and sweetly rounded bosoms and cool competence, as far from Ray Person as it’s possible to get without actually leaving the human race. That Brad might be considering sodomy, and not only sodomy but sodomy with _Ray_ , of all people, is laughable.

If Ray doesn’t say anything, he can at least go on with the fantasy that Brad’s madly jealous of how Ray’s been eyeing Walt’s pretty pink mouth. Ray has a healthy imagination. He can easily picture his first lieutenant pressing him down into his bedroll and punishing him for his roving gaze. Mmm.

He realizes Brad’s looking at him strangely and coughs, searching for something relevant to say.

“Hey, at least the villagers know not to go stark raving mad this time when three dragons pop up in their midst?” he offers brightly, grinning at the memory, and Brad’s eyes crinkle in amusement.

The last time they’d stopped by Uig Bay, the girls had snuck up to the waterfront harbor and managed to infiltrate the town, peering interestedly in the windows of the tiny cottages before a housewife had noticed them, screamed, thrown a pie at Bravo’s face, and fled. At that point all the villagers had been alerted to their presence and had scattered like panicked Scottish sheep, spilling wildly all over the town and screaming incomprehensively in thick impenetrable accents before finally proffering their livestock up to the vicious, bloodthirsty invading dragons, quaking and terrified.

Said dragons had promptly accepted the three pigs in grateful surprise and then asked hopefully if they happened to have any more pies available.

As a practice reconnaissance mission went, it’d been a dismal failure—clearly there are limits as to how close middleweight dragons can get to a relatively dense human settlement without someone spotting them. But now Bravo and Marisol and Anima are all great friends of the Uig children, who, once they’d gotten over their fears, had spent the afternoon giggling and clambering all over their backs and being taken aloft for short rides. Ray suspects they’ll spend tonight being cosseted and well-fed, and possibly being festooned with garlands of wildflowers again.

“Have you passed on word to Poke and Pappy yet?” Ray inquires, sipping at his tea again and making a face. Brad smirks at him before answering, because he is a sadistic bastard and enjoys watching Ray pining for his beloved coffee.

“Not yet, but I suspect they’ll agree with my logic on this matter.”

“Your logic is pretty fucking good, I must agree,” Ray says cheerfully. “Those Uig folk make a damn fine spread of grub. We’ll get the girls to scoop up some tunny, maybe a whale, pay them back for last time, what d’you think? I’m thinking maybe if we get them a good honkin’ whale or two, they’ll feed us until we can’t walk. Some of that stew, oh Lord, that stew, speaking of things that are almost as good as sex. I’m so ready for food that isn’t raw or charred to hell and back—remind me that we need to find at least one crew member that can cook worth a damn when we get back to the covert. And hey, do you think maybe the mayor’ll broach a cask of ale for us this time? I could fucking use a good drink. Although we’ll need to muzzle Lilley, probably, before he gets himself shot by an outraged father.”

“Let’s save the muzzles for you and your filthy mouth, Captain,” Brad says, rolling his eyes, and Ray grins.

“No need, I’ve got you to keep me out of trouble, right?” He pokes Brad in the arm and Brad shoots him a sidelong look.

“I’m flattered,” he retorts, but a smile is twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Now that we’ve established I’m to be your nanny for the evening, I’ll go pass on the message to the other captains.”

“Well, then. Glad I could help you make these incredibly important decisions, Lieutenant,” Ray says, kicking back in his carabiners and enjoying the breeze. He may go back and do a bit more shooting with the boys again in a few minutes, or he might not. Bravo’s noticed he’s up here and is craning her head to look at him, eyes bright and interested, and he hasn’t gotten a chance to chat with her all morning.

“Your input is vital to the success of our endeavors, Captain,” Brad says brightly. “Oh, before I forget, I wanted to let you know: Bravo has been inquiring as to what ‘fellatio’ is. Have fun with that, sir.”

And then the bastard’s moving off to pass the message along to the signal ensigns.

“I _will_!” Ray shouts after him, and then turns his attention to contemplating how to explain the appeal of putting one’s mouth on another’s genitals to a twelve ton dragon with giant bloody daggers for teeth.

Maybe if he uses puppets.

***

Brad forbids him from making puppets; apparently it would be ‘bad for morale for the men to see their commanding officer playing with paper dolls.’ Mainly Ray thinks Brad’s just worried Ray’s going to commandeer one of his precious maps and make a giant sugar stick out of it, which wounds Ray deeply. He would _never_ attempt to come between Brad and his maps, never. Well, maybe never. Hardly ever. It might have crossed his mind once or twice. _Anyway_ , the impromptu festival the villagers had thrown them had luckily taken Bravo’s mind off of the question of oral-genital contact and the appeal thereof, so Ray’s gotten a brief reprieve anyway. He’ll just scrounge up some rag dolls and paper and other necessary supplies when they get back to the covert. Puppets are still a go – Brad just doesn’t know it yet. Hopefully.

They’re heading back to Loch Laggan now, flying at a rather leisurely pace. They’re all stuffed, and Ray has a bit of a headache and a lingering suspicion that he might have possibly tried to convince Poke to do a country folkdance with him the night before. The booze provided by the mayor had been both plentiful and excellent— Ray has fuzzy memories of Brad laughing, of Pappy and Rudy dancing, of Stafford being chased out of a cottage by a woman with a broom. He remembers Bravo wreathed in flowers, the petals falling down on Brad’s hair, pink and purple and blue, and Ray’s pretty sure he’d fallen asleep on Brad’s shoulder and drooled everywhere, which is sort of embarrassing, but he’d woken up with Brad nearby, petals still in his hair and a smile on his sleeping face, and it’d been torturous and wonderful at the same time. It’d been a good night, and now it’s a beautiful day, and if Ray could just get his hands on a cup of coffee, life would be just approaching perfect.

The thing is, Brad’s been guarding the coffee like a miser the whole time they’ve been out, only granting Ray one cup over the morning campfire and sometimes, if Ray’s been especially sweet and polite during the day, one at lunch. That hasn’t happened often. Ray isn’t well-known for his sweetness, sadly. But sleep has been coming easier these days, as much as Ray hates to admit it. He feels less jittery, more comfortable in his own skin, but some of that might well be from all the hard work they’ve been doing, or the summer air, or the fact that he goes to bed each night nestled against Bravo’s side, with Brad snoring close by. They haven’t been sharing quarters since Ray got his captaincy, and, well, Ray misses it, misses having Brad close.

That last is way too pathetic and flowery and precious to ever admit out loud, but Ray points out the summer air and hard work thing. Brad still won’t hand over extra rations of caffeine.

Ray’s so-called ‘crew’ is sadly resistant to bribery, because they’re all ridiculously terrified of his first lieutenant, even though Ray tells them all Brad’s not actually going to pitch them off dragonback. And even if he does, Bravo can catch them! But still they quail and withhold the coffee. Ray gets no goddamned respect.

Still, he’s proud of all the little cowardly bastards, of the dragons and his fellow captains. Of himself, even. They’ve got the beginnings of an elite reconnaissance team, one that can pick through the countryside with ease, live off the land and gather information, and it’s one that can fight back and pitch a battle if need be. Not bad for three weeks’ of work, and they’ve got a lot of plans for their next venture out. Ray is pretty fucking sure Celeritas is going to be impressed. And he should be; they’re going to hand Boney his arse on a platter.

Bravo’s chattering excitedly to him about desserts, turning her head to ask Ray hopefully whether he thinks they can convince the kitchens to make an enormous boysenberry pie, just for her. His dragon, Ray thinks fondly, pressing his cheek to her neck. Only he would have a bloodthirsty dragon with a sweet tooth.

They’re only an hour or so away from the covert, and Ray’s just starting to fantasize about a hot bath and a pilfered pot of coffee, all for him, when Brad’s hand clamps down on his shoulder.

“Captain,” Brad says, and something in his voice makes Ray snap out of his lazy slouch, set his hands on the saber at his belt. “There’s a signal up ahead.”

There’s a Winchester in the air in front of them, purplish wings blending with the twilight sky. She’s about a half mile from the covert, and she’s signaling them to stop immediately. Stop immediately, land, and await orders. Do not approach.

“Well, that’s bloody bizarre,” Ray says slowly, watching the small dragon wheel and speed back towards the covert. Brad’s tense next to him. “What d’you think it’s about? I mean, can’t be the French, can it? They’d never make it up this far north, not in three weeks' time.”

“I don’t know, but orders are orders, Ray,” Brad says, and Ray agrees absently; the dragons are already landing and huddling together nervously. “I think we should keep the men aboard, though. Just in case.”

“Agreed,” Ray says, rubbing at his temples. “I wonder how long we’ll be waiting.” The girls have been flying all day, and even though it’s been at a slow pace, they’ve been working their tails off for weeks. All of them, man and dragon, are looking forward to baths and dinner, a chance to sleep in their own clearings and beds. And, well, also probably for the chance to brag over the new skills they’ve acquired, maybe place some bets. Now they’re being made to wait, for who knew how long or for what purpose. Ray’s a bit annoyed the Winchester hadn’t just made the effort to fly a little closer, at least give them some sort of clue as to what to expect.

But it turns out they don’t have to wait long at all. The orders aren’t coming by air, like Ray’d expected. Instead there’s a horseman, pounding across the moor hell-bent for leather, his shadow stretching out long and thin behind him.

“I don’t like this,” Ray says, watching the small shape coming closer, feeling an abrupt chill. “I don’t like this at all.”

Brad stays standing at Ray’s elbow, his mouth tight. Ray would much rather he roll his eyes or call him an old maid, a mother hen, but Brad doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything at all, just narrows his eyes at the horizon and stands so close Ray can feel the warmth of him. It’s a bit difficult not leaning back into it.

The horseman stops a few hundred yards off, dismounts, and slaps the horse on the rear, sending it galloping back across the moor towards the covert. Now Ray’s really fucking confused.

“Oh, it’s Doc Bryan!” Bravo exclaims suddenly, sitting down on her haunches and lashing her tail. “But what is he doing here? We are none of us injured. Should we go to him?”

“Doc Bryan? Bennett’s assistant?” Ray asks, puzzled, and she nods. He trusts her eyesight over his, so he doesn’t bother trying to get a better look for the moment.

“Huh,” he says, nonplussed. “I’m not sure what he’s doing here, buttercup, but I think we should stay here for the moment, yeah?” Bravo hums lowly and then sidles over closer to Marisol, pressing their necks together. Ray leans over and waves at Poke.

“What the hell, man,” he says in greeting, and sees Poke shrug. He’s got a worried, pinched look on his face. “This isn’t normal.”

“No, you think? I figured we were just all joining the cavalry now.” Poke shoots back, running a hand through his hair. “Guess we’d better see what the good doctor wants. If we disregard orders now, Celeritas’ll have our damn heads.”

“He’s a scary motherfucker,” Pappy agrees from Poke’s other side, and so they all dismount and approach the doctor cautiously—it seems unlikely he could present any real threat, not when all of them are armed and Bryan’s got nothing on himself but a knapsack. But the situation’s bizarre, has an oddly threatening flavor to it. Ray can’t decide whether to be glad Poke and Pappy seem to think the same thing. He’d almost rather it be his mind playing tricks on him.

“Are any of them coughing?” Bryan says fiercely when he reaches them. No hello, how are you, how was training. He just gets right in their faces, his own covered in stubble, and scowls fiercely. Ray blinks.

“Uh, coughing?” he asks, eyeing the doctor warily. “What do you mean, coughing? You mean the dragons? What’s this about, Doc?” Bryan reaches out and shakes him and there’s a sudden bristle of weapons, which is on one hand stupid, it’s not like the doctor’s going to hurt him. But on the other, Ray’s kind of grateful for the back-up, because Bryan looks pretty terrifying at the moment.

Bryan doesn’t even seem to notice the tension of the men around him. “Are they coughing, man!” Bryan spits out, hands bruisingly tight on Ray’s shoulders. “It’s a simple fucking question!”

“No, Jesus!” Ray says, and wrenches free, rubbing at his shoulder uneasily. “No one’s coughing! What the hell?”

The Doc slumps slightly, like maybe he’s relieved or something. “It’s a plague,” he says, rubbing the back of his wrist over his forehead. Ray notices, finally, the giant hollows beneath his eyes that go along with the stubble, the rough state of the man’s clothing. Bryan continues, low and in monotone, and it takes a while for Ray to follow what he’s saying. The Black Death is all he can think of at first, and once Bryan explains, he almost wishes he’d been right.

“That American brute they took in last December, the Dakota, it must have been the carrier,” Bryan tells them, and they’ve all fallen silent now, listening. Ray feels the blood pounding in his temples; he doesn’t want to hear this. “The patrol that flew in with him to Greenland, they’re all dead now, all of them. The bitch of it is, it looks like a typical cold at first.”

“Which means it’s spread,” Pappy says softly, and Bryan nods, mouth tight.

“We got in a courier a few weeks back from Dover, and she was coughing. It was before we’d heard about the deaths in Greenland and we didn’t think to quarantine her,” Doc says grimly. “It seemed like a typical cough, but it’s already spread. We think it’s the phlegm that does it, some sort of contact, inhaled or otherwise. The shared grounds, the drinking troughs. They’re all coughing now, all of them.”

“How did no one notice?” Ray asks tightly, and then shakes his head. No, it’s fucking done, now, there’s nothing to be solved by hunting people down and bashing in their heads for their stupidity.

Doc ignores him. “There’s some hope we can delay the deaths if we can keep them warm, keep them eating. The cold progresses slowly. They lose their appetites; that’s how it kills the bigger ones, it seems. They starve to death, lose mass. But they all go eventually. All of them. It’s a consumption; once they start coughing blood, they eventually drown in it. I’m told it’s not a pretty death.” He pauses. “The courier arrived the day before you left on training. There’s a chance your girls have been exposed.”

Pappy goes pale and dashes back over to Anima. Poke just shakes his head in disbelief. Ray listens to him talk, tries to remain standing. He remembers the courier now, a little Winchester. Scylla. She’d landed the evening before they’d left. He even remembers her sneezing, now that he thinks of it.

“No way,” Poke is saying, arms crossed, glaring at the man in front of them. “There has to be something. Can’t be no cure at all, Doc. And you don’t know it’s fatal in every case, right? Just the ones so far.” He pauses a bit, sounds a little less sure, a little more worried. “They _all_ have this cough?”

“It’s true we don’t know for sure,” Doc says, scowling. “There may be a cure somewhere. But dammit, every last dragon in all the coverts in England is coughing now, from what we can tell. And they don’t stop coughing until they die.”

Brad is at Ray’s elbow, and he’s had his hand on the back of Ray’s neck, warm and steadying, throughout the whole conversation. Ray doesn’t even realize he’s there until he’s running back to Bravo, as though he could outrun time and death, and notices the back of his neck is cold with the absence of Brad’s hand.

He shakes it off. “How do you feel?” he asks Bravo urgently, stumbling to a halt in front of her, the air burning in his lungs. She looks puzzled, worried. The ground beneath her talons is churned better than any plow could have managed.

“I feel quite well?” she says anxiously, and Ray feels her tail tugging at his ankle, dragging him closer. He lets her, wants to be close, as though he could somehow protect her from this. “I am only a bit hungry, and tired. Ray, what is wrong?”

“You’re breathing okay?” he asks urgently, and places a hand on her chest, feels only the familiar slow thump of her great heart. “No coughing? No sneezing?”

“Not since Rudy tried to roast that shark with those odd roots,” she says, shaking her head distastefully at the memory, and Ray feels weak with relief, like his knees might give way.

“It may be latent,” the Doc says from behind them, and Ray wants to punch him. “She may just not be presenting symptoms yet.”

“We left the next fucking morning!” Ray argues, mouth dry. “They didn’t have time to catch anything. They’re fine. They’re fine, goddammit.” Maybe. Maybe. Oh, Christ, please, let them have left in time. He’ll never ask for anything else from the cosmos ever again. Doc is climbing up on Bravo’s knee, listening to her chest with a stethoscope, frowning, why the fuck is he frowning?

Doc climbs down and strides over to Anima and Pappy, shaking his head.

“What the fuck did you hear?” Ray calls after him, and the man flaps a hand at Ray like he’s not got time for such silly questions as whether or not Ray’s dragon is going to fucking die, or whether he’d like to see how well that stethoscope works from inside his own rectum when Ray _shoves it up there_.

“Captain,” Brad says urgently, breaking into his thoughts. “Ray, you’ve got to calm down.”

“I am fucking calm!” Ray snaps, and then Brad hauls him against his chest. Ray stays for a second, shuddering, listening to Brad’s heart and feeling his breath in Ray’s hair, and then he makes himself jerk free, following Bryan over to Marisol. Brad’s at his heels.

“I don’t hear any congestion. They’re all clean,” Bryan is saying as they approach, tugging the stethoscope out of his ears; Ray feels like he could kiss the man. “For now. I can’t promise they’ll stay that way.”

“We can’t stay here and wait to find out,” Brad says, frowning. “We’ve got no food, no water, no cover. We’ve got to move.”

“Damn straight we need to move,” Bryan agrees, hopping down and patting Marisol absently on the talon. “We’re still not sure how the contagion spreads, and these might be the last uninfected dragons in England. If it turns out they are healthy, they’ll be needed. But Christ, they’re so young.”

“I am not so young,” Marisol says indignantly, and the others chime in, offended. Ray would pat her nose reassuringly, but she is, she is so young. She’s barely a year old yet, and Bravo’s even younger.

“We’ll manage,” Poke says coolly. “Will you be coming with us, Doc, or going back to the covert?”

“I’m coming, obviously,” Bryan says, scowling. “I’ll need to monitor the dragons for another week at least, and they’ve got plenty of doctors back at the covert. They can spare me, and you can’t. If they do start presenting symptoms, we should return to Loch Laggan. If they’re healthy, well…” He trails off. “Fuck me if I know what happens next, but you’ll probably need a good surgeon around.”

“Let’s worry about that when the time comes,” Brad says, and Ray agrees. Somehow it feels like it could jinx things, talking about a future that might never arrive. A future that even if it does come holds plenty of blood and cannon-fire and danger.

“Where should we go, Ray?” Bravo asks worriedly, and he can tell she’s confused, not sure what the fuss is about quite yet. It’s probably hard for a dragon to imagine it, dying of a cold and not from cannon, or acid, or a spray of fire. Dragons don’t die very easily, not normally.

“I…” Ray says, and looks helplessly over at Pappy and Espera, at Brad, at the staring riflemen and the worried, huge eyes of the three young Anglewings. Then he draws himself up. “Back to the hills for tonight. We’ve made it two weeks out here: we can make it a couple more days. Wait things out.”

Espera nods at him. “The loch thirty miles north? Plenty of game there. Good place to wait, and it’s not more than half a day from Inverness. We can send word back to the covert from there.”

They take off into the growing darkness, the stars just starting to come out. Ray feels blank. He can’t think of anything to say. The men are waiting to hear something, he knows, but he just wants to lay down atop Bravo and listen to her breathe, to count her wingbeats. If something was wrong, he would know, wouldn’t he? He feels like he should be able to know just by putting his hand on her skin, feeling the heat of blood and muscle beneath the scales.

“Well, gentlemen,” Brad announces, his voice strong and clear, and when Ray looks up he’s got a battle smile on his face, tight and brilliant. “Looks like we’ll have the opportunity to put our skills to the test a bit sooner than anticipated.” He begins explaining the situation, and Ray tunes him out, doesn’t want to hear it again. Instead he sings a lullaby his mom had always sung him, sung over his sisters’ cribs, low and sweet. Bravo hears him, turns her head now and then to listen, to nuzzle him before righting herself again.

Fuck, Ray could use a cup of coffee. God damn Brad, with his mean, unprincipled coffee-hoarding ways; now Ray can barely function at all, when he needs to the most. Then Brad does that creepy thing where he can somehow sense Ray thinking lecherous or insulting things about him and appears instantaneously at Ray’s side, looking calm and inscrutable. It’s one of the most aggravating things about him, honestly. Ray scowls and eyes him suspiciously.

“Bet you’re glad I’ve been rationing the coffee now, sir,” Brad says smartly, raising an eyebrow. “We’ve got enough left to last us another three days at least.” Ray’s about to punch him in the chest or start ranting or maybe just stare straight ahead and not say anything at all, but then Brad hands Ray a flask. It’s full of dark, cold coffee, black and bitter and it tastes worse than ass, it tastes like day-old ass, maybe even older than that. Ray can’t breathe for a moment.

“Brad,” he says finally, looking up from beneath his lashes and licking his lips. “Did you just give me your own personal emergency flask of coffee? You _prince_.”

“Don’t get used to it, Captain,” Brad smirks, and then hesitates, his face strangely young for a split second, and puts a hand on Ray’s shoulder. “Ray. It’ll be alright.”

Ray thinks maybe it will be.


	4. Chapter 4

_Dover, Late December, 1806_

It turns out one of the worst parts of the dragon plague is that Ray has to deal with the Admiralty all the sodding time. That’s not true, actually—there are worse parts, but he doesn’t like to think about them, doesn’t like to remember visiting Laetificat and watching her labor for breath, her nostrils red and raw, her ribs showing beneath the dull skin. He tries not to think of it, of the mounded heap of earth that covers Obversaria’s unmoving body, the slump of Lenton’s shoulders as he watched her be buried. She’d looked very like Bravo, smaller in death and curled in on herself.

Ray doesn’t think about any of that, not most of the time. Not when he’s awake, at least. It’d been so close, such a close thing. It could have so easily been—anyway, he doesn’t think about it.

Instead he thinks of how much he bloody hates standing in a room full of old rich men who look down their noses and sneer and seem totally nonplussed by the fact that three dragons cannot be fifteen places at once, and like to ignore the fact that the entirety of Britain’s aerial support depends on three ragamuffin captains and their charges. None of them get taken seriously, right from the very beginning: Ray is too lower class and uncouth, Poke is too dark and ethnic, and Pappy is too Irish for their Lordships to actually listen to, let alone debate with. Ray even tries to be polite, at first, but after they are ordered around like sheep, mocked and drawled at and talked down to at every turn, like they’ve got no fucking idea what they’re doing, he abandons any pretense of politeness and just starts sneering right back.

Right, fine, so their three dragons hadn’t seen a single engagement before they were thrown into the thick of things. They’ve done a damned fine job of protecting their lordships’ interests, regardless of their youth. And alright, it probably doesn’t help matters that Poke and Ray have taken to outright insulting the bastards to their faces, but it’s satisfying, anyway. And then Pappy drawls at them in his soft, pleasant voice and sounds completely submissive and obedient, so long as you aren’t actually listening to him. Though Pappy’s insults, Ray has to admit, do at least tend to be less crude than his own. Ray’s more likely to just tell the weasel-faced whoremongers to kiss his arse; they can hang him for his impudence when he’s not fighting a bloody hopeless war for them.

Really, though, Ray actually has been doing his best not to explode into expletives every time they are called to London for a meeting of strategy, which thankfully isn’t often. Poor Roland has to deal with those pigs in wigs day in and day out, and she’s likely got it worse than any of them. Ray can scarce imagine the uproar that resulted when their Lordships found out about the female Longwing captains. No, the Anglewing captains are definitely missing the brunt of the imbecility, by virtue of actually being out fighting the battles. They’ve got a degree of freedom in their distance from any commanding officer; they can interpret the orders that do come rather liberally, tailor them to the situation, instead of just flying into death dumbly. Roland is stuck dealing with the twats in person. She sends Ray and Poke and Pappy missives directing them all over kingdom come, but they all she’s doing her best to shield them from too much crap falling on them from above.

Anyway, he feels like a twat himself complaining too often. He’s still got Bravo, healthy and tired, but whole. The Admiralty seems dead set on getting them all killed, keep trying to send them into battles with no support and entire fleets of French ships and cannons arrayed against them. But if Bravo dies, it’ll be in fighting. Not a slow, lingering death drowning in her own blood, not like Obversaria. Ray’s lucky, and he knows it.

Things get moderately less intolerable once Laurence and Granby return in December with a new fire-breather and a pack of feral dragons. For one thing, the Admiralty finally have someone else to snipe at. The Anglewings look downright obedient in comparison to the young Kazilik and the motley pack of foreign dragons, who lack any captains whatsoever and have to be coaxed into obedience with shiny trinkets. That’s fantastic enough; Ray bursts into laughter every time he thinks of those hoity toity fuckers in Parliament dealing with it. But on top of that, Iskierka and her feral friends are tearing about the Dover port, setting the bewildered French ablaze, and it’s actually given the Anglewings a chance to rest for the first time in months.

She’s a foul-mouthed, insubordinate godsend in fiery red scales; Ray could kiss her.

“She’s fucking brilliant!” Ray enthuses, bouncing on his heels. “Did you know a Kazilik can hit a target from over eighty yards away? And she can breathe fire for five straight minutes at least. Watch her now.”

He’s just gotten back from a lunch with Granby. The Anglewings are being shipped further south to cover the Channel from Portmouth to Penzance tomorrow, and Granby and his pack of miscreants are taking over the skies in the north. It’s still stretching their resources hellishly thin, but with the rest of the dragons out of commission and Temeraire headed back to Africa in search of a cure for the plague, the Corps hasn’t got much of a choice. Ray and Granby managed to snatch a scant few hours of free time that afternoon, right before Granby’s first scheduled patrol. They’d met up at an inn, shared a bottle of port and a year’s worth of gossip, and now Ray’s in an excellent mood. Unlike his current companions, who seem bent on pissing all over his parade.

“She is not so impressive,” Bravo sniffs. She is basking in the pale, watery sunlight and sulking up a storm. Despite having vocally complained for weeks about how they were all being worked to death and how Ray needed time to sleep and eat, she’s taking their replacement in the Dover harbor remarkably poorly. She’s watching with narrowed eyes as Iskierka darts about the Channel, cheerfully setting sails on fire. “She’s got no finesse at all. I do not think she is even attempting to take the necessary targets, she is just going for the ships with the best figureheads, look.”

Ray huffs out an enormous sigh. The things he puts up with. “Oh, come off it, you must admit she’s pretty damned fantastic,” he protests. “Look at the Frogs go, they’re like wee fish in front of a shark. And she’s totally bloodthirsty, a real little ripper of a thing. Granby’ll have his hands full with her, I can tell you. He’s over the moon. Did I tell you about how they snatched her egg from the Turks?”

They’d spent lunch comparing stories from the last year: Granby’s trip to China and across the Himalayas, through Istanbul and Prussia—fucking madness, Ray’s a bit jealous, to be honest. And then about the twenty-nine skirmishes Ray and Bravo’d had to commit to protect Dover and their other ports over the duration of the plague, just three Anglewings against hordes of the French. Granby looked a bit disbelieving at times, but most of it’s the God’s honest truth, and Ray’s exhaustion must have lent an air of sincerity to his voice. At the end, Granby had just clapped him on the back sympathetically and poured him another glass.

Ray’d sort of thought they might renew a more intimate acquaintance after that, to be honest, relieve some tension, but it hadn’t taken much conversation to realize Granby’d had more luck with Laurence than Ray had with Brad. He went all stupid and red whenever he mentioned Laurence’s name, and Ray’d finally had to roll his eyes and just ask: “So is Laurence any good, then? He looks like the type to be a fucking lion in the bedroom.”

Granby had spit wine everywhere and spent a moment spluttering indignantly, then he’d given in and leaned in towards Ray with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Raymond, my friend, you have _no idea_.”

“You dog,” Ray had said despondently, and let himself be poured another dram of port. “I suppose I won’t ask to debauch you further, then.”

Granby had flushed further, smiling and playing with the stem of his glass. “No,” he’d agreed, almost shyly, cheeks pink. Ray might have hated him, a bit. “I rather think I’ve been taken off the market for good.” Ray _definitely_ hates him, in retrospect, but the bastard had been so ridiculously happy it was hard to be mean about it, even when Granby was terribly selfish and didn’t share any details.

Anyway, Ray’d made the mistake of coming back an hour or so later, glowing with praise for the new dragon and her captain, a bit flushed with drink, and now his dragon and first lieutenant were having an enormous hissy strop for no good reason.

“Granby’s hardly handling her well,” Brad says pointedly, scowling and crossing his arms over his chest. “He will ruin her. She has no discipline.”

“If you can even say she _handles_ at all,” Bravo notes coolly, arranging herself to best show her glowing golden-brown coils in the sun. Ray squints, pained, shielding his eyes. “Look, she is wasting a good half a second each wingbeat, making turns that way. It is all show and no economy.”

“Agreed,” Brad says, scowling, and they are both utterly useless, picking away at Iskierka’s every move, just because she’d accidentally set fire to a British mast or two. She’d put it out almost immediately anyway, commandeering a small fishing boat, filling it with water, and dumping it over the blaze. All sorted. But Brad and Bravo just grumble and starting complaining about the lack of cohesion in her formation.

Ray has had enough. He throws his hands up in the air. “What, are you _jealous?_ ” he asks them both incredulously. “Don’t be stupid, Iskierka’s not a patch on you, Bravo, and you know it. You’re just being difficult.” They ignore him, and Ray gives up. “If you two want to waste our first night off in months bitching about our bloody fantastic new dragon, wonderful. Fine. Sensational. Have a party. I’m going to have a bath before we’re shipped off wherever. Have fun being a bunch of old biddies.”

They both sniff disdainfully, alarmingly in unison with each other. Well, they can just keep each other company, then. Ray stomps off. Bravo coils herself up, arching her queenly head to better sneer at Iskierka’s prowess, or lack thereof. As he leaves the clearing, Ray hears her trying to engage Marisol in insulting the Kazilik, but Marisol is feigning sleep and snoring away obnoxiously. Ray envies her. At least she can pretend to escape by sleeping. Ray’s stuck with Brad, who is following him even now, looming and disapproving, dogging each steps—escape of any sort is clearly not an option.

“In case you wondered, _Captain_ ,” and how the fuck does Brad make an honorific sound like ‘you worthless fucking word-grubbing wastrel’? _How?_ “We’re going to Portmouth. You should at least be aware of the name of our next posting, you incompetent ass.”

“Portmouth, right,” Ray drawls, mock-thoughtful. Brad’s annoyed face is usually equal parts terrifying and adorable—Ray gets the feeling he might be the only person in the Corps that sees the ‘adorable’ in it. Right now he sees only ‘obnoxious.’ “Thanks for that. You’re a peach.”

“Don’t you think you’re being appallingly stupid, Raymond?” Brad bites out, following him into the baths.

“Well, why change now?” Ray snips, loosening his cravat and then tossing it on a nearby bench, then sitting down to shuck off his boots. “I’ve got you to keep track of things for me. And I really don’t see what the fuss is—Iskierka being here makes all our lives a damned sight easier, and it’s not like we’re going to have to work with her.”

Brad cuts in, getting in Ray’s face. Ray freezes in the midst of unbuttoning his shirt, looking up uncertainly.

“What I meant, _sir_ , that the piano player was one thing. At least you were somewhat circumspect—for you, anyway, which isn’t saying much—and I admit you’ve left off visiting your whores lately, which helps. I’m glad of that. But Granby is a captain of the Corps. You can’t just go swanning off in the middle of your duties for a quick screw by the docks and expect no one to notice.”

Ray can scarcely get his lungs to work. “You’re out of line, Colbert,” he whispers, and tries to look away. He can’t. Brad’s never said anything about Ray’s dalliances with men, never once mentioned how he talks a good show and is fond of large-breasted women, but never seems to date any of them. Ray knew Brad had to have suspected, after a while, but he’d never said anything, and Ray’d felt safe. He even flirts back when Ray teases him, sometimes, but it’s always joking, always friendly.

And now this. It’s making his chest hurt. He can barely breathe.

“They hang men for sodomy,” Brad says fiercely, and takes a step forward. Ray’s shirt is half unbuttoned and he’s feeling terribly naked, suddenly, but his fingers don’t want to work, numb and trembling. “You’re risking your life to dally with these men. You stupid fucker, they’d _hang_ you.”

“Okay, one, they wouldn’t dare,” Ray says, talking quickly and backing up again. The covert baths are a terrible place to have this conversation, but it’s midday. The rooms are steamy and empty, that’s one thing to be thankful for. Ray hears himself talking, words echoing in the emptiness, but most of his attention is on Brad’s face, on the tense line of his mouth, on wondering if he’s about to punch Ray in the nose. “Bravo’s too important to the war effort, they wouldn’t dare hang me, not now. I’ve got fucking immunity, Brad. They can’t just kill me, not that easily, not for something like—like that. Two—” He sucks in a breath as Brad steps closer, takes Ray’s shoulders in a bruising grip. His voice falters a moment. “Two, I—there was no screwing, the docks or anywhere else. It was just lunch, you goddamned suspicious twit, not that it’s any of your damned business.”

“It’s entirely my business,” Brad replies, quiet and intense. “If they’re going to hang you for something, it’s my business. You’re my—my captain.”

“Never got the impression you cared much,” Ray attempts airily, and Brad grabs the back of his neck. Ray freezes, and then Brad’s—it’s like a cannon goes off behind Ray’s eyes, rendering him completely and totally incapable of any thought that isn’t revolving around shock and light and Brad’s lips hot and firm against his.

“What, I don’t—” Ray tries to say against Brad’s mouth, and Brad growls and shoves him back against the wall. Ray’s toes leave the floor for a moment, and he moans involuntarily, helplessly. The kiss deepens, wet and bruising, and Brad’s hand twines in Ray’s hair.

“I care,” Brad says finally, hot and damp against Ray’s skin, moving his lips along the line of Ray’s jaw. Ray can’t fucking stand it, how he’s completely undone by this simple thing, unable to do anything but pant and arch his neck. Brad sucks a throbbing kiss into his skin, and then Ray shakes himself mentally, tries to struggle for sanity, for thought. What the fuck is happening here? Brad isn’t homosexual. Brad likes women. But it’s hard to think when Brad’s grinding against him like that. “I do care, Ray. And you’re safer this way, with me. Fuck, I’ll make sure you’re safe, I’ll take care of you.”

That penetrates Ray’s brain slowly, penetrates the daze Brad’s hands are causing like a drug. Brad cares, but that doesn’t mean he cares the way Ray does. He wants Ray safe.

“Stop,” Ray says thickly, and shoves Brad back. Brad doesn’t move at first, so Ray has to put a bit of weight behind it, enough that Brad staggers and then looks at him with big, confused blue eyes. His mouth is red and used and wet, and Ray hates him a little bit, really hates him for the first time in his life, and wishes he could maintain the feeling because beneath it is a wave of humiliation and pain. He doesn’t want that part to surface, wants to stay infuriated forever. But it’s not Brad’s fault Ray wants something he can’t give. Brad’s offering him a hell of a fucking lot, but Ray doesn’t want Brad’s pity. “You don’t have to do this. I don’t—don’t want it. Not like this.”

“What, you’ll let John Granby and Joseph Bones sod you, but not me?” Brad asks furiously. His hair is a mess—Ray must have run his hands through it at some point. He hadn’t gotten a chance to appreciate it because he’d been out of his goddamned mind with shock and lust, and now he never will, because-- _fuck_. “You’re risking your fucking life for these men. Do you have _feelings_ for them, is that it? Is that why?”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Ray says tightly, trying not to look at Brad’s mouth, the line of his throat. He could have it, could taste it. He never imagined it like this, never imagined Brad kissing him could do this, bring a tight feeling to his chest like a sob, or a burning in his throat like bile. He feels stupid, and sick, and of course Brad is just that fucking noble, to offer to satisfy someone he loves but doesn’t want, just to keep them safe.

“I get that you’re worried, Brad,” he continues, summoning a sardonic smirk from somewhere. “I’ll be more circumspect when I find fellow sodomites to satisfy my perverse, unnatural urges in the future, I promise. Just, for now, please, if you’ve ever had any fond feelings for me at all, just—go. Get out of here. Let me take my fucking bath and we’ll forget all this. _Please_.”

Brad breathes out through his nose, takes a step forward and then his hand is on Ray’s chest, right over his heart. He has nice hands, and Ray could trace the lines of them in his sleep. He has to close his eyes and concentrate on breathing for a moment.

“But I don’t want—” Brad starts to say, low and rough, like it hurts to talk, and then over the hiss of steam and the thump of his own heart, Ray hears a familiar, hateful sound: Christeson and Lilley and Stafford ricocheting down the hallway towards them, their laughter echoing off the stone walls, high and chattering. They’ll be in the baths at any moment, will see Ray like this, Brad like this—but then Ray blinks and Brad’s hand is gone.

Brad’s back is facing him when the three boys enter. They halt, throw a couple lazy salutes, and swagger off to the other side of the baths, stripping and tossing their pants at each other. Fingers stiff, Ray motions back at them dazedly, probably long after they’ve stopped even looking at him. Brad stays facing away, staring down at the bench. He’s doing something, but Ray can’t see what. He’s busy trying to parse the cheerful banter of the boys, the splashing, the line of Brad’s back and the words he’d just said.

“You should take better care of your things, sir,” Brad says quietly, suddenly, and Ray somehow hears it over the echoes and voices and water, and then Brad’s gone. Two long steps take him to the door and then out, and he’s gone.

Ray blinks, looks over, and chokes out a surprised laugh. The fucker’s folded all Ray’s clothes.

***

Ray goes to find Bravo afterwards, his hair still dripping from the baths and icy in the January air, his clothes perfectly creased. She’s coiled up haughtily, peering out at the harbor and flicking her tail like she’s terribly annoyed with him, he Ray knows she doesn’t mean it, not really. She’s a bit overdramatic at times; Ray supposes he has only himself to blame for teaching her that. He ignores the way she sniffs disdainfully at him, muttering about his wet hair and how if only he had a _fire-breather_ for a dragon he could likely dry it for himself and never worry about the chill. Instead he only settles himself between her forelegs, leans against her chest and closes his eyes.

She smells of high wind and fresh air and dead animal, the goat from her breakfast, probably, and he can hear the bellow of her lungs moving as she grumbles, a low sweet healthy movement of air. He remembers when he could pick her up in his arms, and now her heart is twice the size of him, beating loud and hot. He loves listening to it, the cadence of it; he focuses on the sound of it vibrating against his bones instead of the tight feeling behind his eyes.

Brad—what had he been about to say? Maybe Ray doesn’t want to know. Probably not, but it’s hammering behind his eyes right now, the look on Brad’s face. He imagines he can still feel the five phantom fingers on his chest. He’s going to insane over this, he knows it. He presses his face into his knees and breathes to the beat of a dragon heart, slow and steady. Brad doesn’t want him, can’t possibly know how Ray feels or he’d never have offered—but how long has he known about Ray and the other men? He hadn’t said anything, not once.

“Ray?” Bravo says hesitantly, nosing him, and he turns and rests his head against her cheek, sighs. Her breath is godawful, worse than a butcher’s shop, and he loves her so much it aches. “Ray, what is wrong? I do not want you to catch cold, you are wet all over.”

“I’m fine, love,” he tells her, chest heavy, and she curls up around him, wings arched protectively to hide him from the wind.

She asks him again, nuzzling worriedly, but when he doesn’t respond, not really, she only coils around him more carefully, tucks her neck around him. She starts humming, and then, as the sun sets, she begins to sing and Ray cannot help but smile.

Marisol and Anima moan and make a great show of hiding their heads beneath their wings, but Bravo continues on. She has seen Ray laugh up at her and now she cannot be stopped. She’s bellowing out into the cold air and likely setting all the cats in Dover to yowling and all the children to hiding beneath their beds. She has a voice like a rusty saw, though it is surprisingly on key.

It’s a bawdy song that he knows Bravo only vaguely understands, even after all Ray’s attempts to diagram human anatomy for her, and he interrupts and tells her they should make up a version more applicable to dragons. This draws the other two dragons into the conversation, and soon they are all squabbling over what bits of a female’s anatomy are the most appealing. Ray is appalled and horrified and can’t stop laughing. He does not even know what an egg spur is and what is more, he does not want to, but it appears to be a central part of the chorus now.

When Brad appears in the clearing, aghast, hands clapped over his ears, Ray automatically beams at him and waves cheerfully before even thinking about it. Brad stomps over, face a veritable stormcloud, but it’s his normal ‘Ray, what have you done, your behavior cannot be sanctioned by either God or the Devil, you are some new species of infernal beast’ expression and Ray feels the weight on his chest lighten suddenly, like now he can finally breathe again.

Maybe they’re alright, after all. Well, of course they are. They’re Bradley Colbert and Ray Person, they can’t be anything else.

“This is our finest weapon against the French,” Brad says, pained. Ray can barely hear him over the cacophony and the wheeze of his own laughter. He is pretty sure there are tears streaming from his eyes at this point. “This. I almost think we should deploy them as a form of auditory warfare. The demoralizing effect—I can scarcely imagine it.”

“The Admiralty would never stoop to such despicable, savage tactics,” Ray drawls, and then falls over on his side, covering his face and giggling. “Brad, oh my god, you haven’t even heard the verse about their tails yet. I had no idea! Do you know, I think our three dragons are not only inverts, but engaged in the most obscene sort of polyamory? How fantastic is that!”

“We are going to be dragged into the town square and burned,” Brad says mournfully, but he is laughing, and when Poke and Pappy appear a few minutes later, he keeps them from tossing Ray off the parapets. He’s standing a little farther away than he normally would, perhaps, and the moments where they would normally bump shoulders pass with Ray leaning against Bravo’s side and Brad standing conscientiously a few feet back. But Ray supposes that’s to be expected.

Ray still feels brittle, a bit like something inside himself has cracked and is sending jagged pieces into his lungs, his blood, but it doesn’t much signify. Brad is smiling at him. They’re going to be alright.

***

Later, Ray realizes he decided this too soon; they are not alright. Nothing is alright. At the beginning of the flight to Portmouth, dawn streaking the sky pink and orange, Brad had approached him. He’d placed a hand on Ray’s upper arm, said in a low voice, “Ray, we need to talk. We never finished—I think perhaps there are issues that require clarification between us,” so close that his breath had been warm on Ray’s ear, despite the chill morning wind whipping around them.

“Talk about what?” Ray had replied, high and jittery, smiling wide and empty. Brad had went still, like Ray had hit him, and Ray had just—kept talking, prattling on like an imbecile. It’s just—he couldn’t let Brad guess how he felt. Even that moment had been awkward, but it’d be approximately ten thousand times worse if Brad knew Ray wanted to cherish him from head to toe, worship his body, listen to his drawl forever. Pathetic, Person. And he couldn’t even come up with an adequate change of subject. “I can’t think of anything we could possibly need to talk about, Lieutenant, not a thing, not a blessed, bloody thing. Can you? Of course not, because there’s nothing.” _Pathetic._

Brad had stayed silent for a moment, then peeled his hand off Ray’s arm, said, “Only that I suspect you’ve been sneaking more than your allotted ration of coffee, sir.” And Ray had laughed and protested, and Brad had watched him blandly and then vanished. Disappeared. If it wasn’t for the occasionally glimpse of bright blonde hair and broad shoulders Ray spotted as he scanned the dragonback, he’d have thought Brad’d fallen off.

Bravo is no Regal Copper. There’s no way Brad should be so good at eluding his captain when they’re all trapped aboard a middleweight Anglewing at an altitude of several thousand feet, but Ray supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. It’s Bradley Colbert. Brad can do pretty much any damned thing he sets his mind to, and apparently lately he’s set his mind to breaking Ray’s sanity into a thousand, tiny pieces.

Ray should have said yes yesterday. Fuck, he should have just ripped off Brad’s belt and gone to his knees on the unforgiving stone floor, taken Brad in his mouth, finally tasted him. He’s thought of it a thousand times a day for the last ten years, it seems, wondering if Brad’s mouth would fall open, if he’d tilt his head back and gasp. If he’d be quiet or if he’d talk, filthy and hot, pushing his hands through Ray’s hair, if he’d tug and pull, and Christ, why hadn’t Ray just let him? Would a pity fuck have been so terrible?

Now he’s up here alone. Bravo’s attention is on the horizon, Brad’s hiding from him somewhere amidst her wings, and Ray can’t stop thinking, can’t get away from his own thoughts, the skittering whirl of them.

He can see it, see how Brad would turn away blithely afterwards, pat Ray absently on the shoulder, leave him wrecked on the floor and wander out whistling. Or worse, he can see Brad’s eyes widen in pity as he realizes what the expression on Ray’s face means—head over fucking heels in love for a man a thousand times his better. ‘Oh, Ray,’ Brad would say. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you more than a quick fuck every now and then, keep you satisfied, keep you from the garret. But you can’t imagine I’d give up the countless ivory-skinned beauties that swoon at my feet, or the sharp-eyed brilliant Longwing captains that take me out back for a hard, maddeningly loud romp. I like cunt and clitoris, round tits and long legs, and I can tolerate the cock and balls you have for a while, but not forever.’

Or he’d look at Ray, horrorstruck and guilty, and that’d be worse, somehow, because it’s not Brad’s fault, not really, he’s not ever supposed to know how Ray feels, never. It’s not his fault he prefers women, that he can’t give Ray more than that.

And then regardless of how Brad reacted, Ray would have to go stick his head in a vat of Longwing acid, because he can’t—even in his mind’s eye it makes his throat go tight and his eyes go hot and his stomach is churning like he’s had a bad meat pie. The thought of Brad looking at him wide-eyed, with pity—Ray can’t stand it, he couldn’t have stood to see it. He made the right decision, turning Brad down, it was the right decision, it _was_.

Only now it seems like he’s lost Brad anyway, after only a kiss, one kiss. One kiss, and Brad’s avoiding him, treating him like a stranger. Maybe Ray should just come clean, tell Brad the truth. At least then—Brad would know, would understand why Ray’s been such a tosser lately, manic and distant and obnoxious.

Things can’t get worse, anyway. He’s gotten used to Brad being constantly at his elbow, offering an offkey harmony to his outbursts of song, or at least an aggravated chorus of ‘With all due respect, please shut _up_ , sir.’ He keeps turning to ask Brad’s opinion on the distant sails Bravo’s spotted on the horizon, or on the quality of coffee likely to be available at the distant outpost they’ve been relegated to, or whether this lot of sailors will be as bad as Lord Nelson, who despite being brilliant had the tendency to toss about dragons as though they were as expendable and unfeeling as wooden ships. But Brad’s not there and Ray bites his tongue on his questions, tastes blood and bad decisions lingering in his mouth for hours, aching.

He catches a glimpse of his lieutenant now and again over the course of the flight, shimmying up Bravo’s side and disappearing amidst the riflemen, his hair bright and clean in the sunlight. Ray doesn’t look for him often, though. He doesn’t want Brad to catch him looking, which is stupid, but fuck it all, Ray has some pride left, he figures. He’ll just talk to Brad later, after they get settled in at the Portmouth fort. Corner him in the barracks, apologize, maybe offer a smile and the last of the port he’s been saving for a special occasion.

Except then they land and meet Commodore Stephen Ferrando, and Ray realizes they’re all fucked, and doesn’t have any time to worry about anything else besides how his girl and his men are going to come out of this fucking war alive.

Well, that’s not true, Ray always has time to contemplate Brad’s mouth and shoulders and the way his legs look in the uniform trousers, and how they’d look out of the trousers and wrapped around Ray’s waist. He can do that crap in his sleep. But an enormous portion of his attention is currently being taken up in trying not to gape in absolute, abject horror as Ferrando welcomes the Anglewing Formation arrival with a series of plans that are apparently designed to get every man, woman, and dragon serving under him killed in action. It’s like listening to Brad outline one of Shakespeare’s moronic tragedies, except apparently that load of bollocks hadn’t been as farfetched as Ray’d thought, because now it’s going down in real life.

Brad had appeared out of thin air when it was time to land, standing quietly at Ray’s shoulder when they went to meet their new commanding officer, and Ray had been preoccupied with not turning and making giant, pleading eyes at Brad. By the end of Ferrando’s speech on bringing the battle to the French—never mind that their naval forces are spread paper-thin across the Baltic and Atlantic and that their aerial forces have been fucking decimated by plague—Ray’s working more on not turning and making giant ‘Oh my sweet Christ in heaven, we’re fucking doomed’ eyes at Brad. He gives in and flicks Brad a glance as they’re being taken on a tour of the grounds, and Brad looks grim, but raises an eyebrow and shrugs.

Ray rolls his eyes—make the best of it, of course they’ll make the best of it, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t fucking stupid. They should be focusing on defense, at least while they’re stretched so thin, but what does Ray fucking know, he’s just a mangy, uneducated aviator. Obviously the wrinkly, mold-ridden, floppy-dicked sots in the Admiralty have a much better grasp of the situation than Ray possibly could, because unless Ray’s missing something huge, this mission they’re being sent on honestly is Shakespearean tragedy levels of stupid. But he nods and keeps his mouth shut anyway, because contrary to what everyone in the damned British Isles says, he actually does know how to hold his tongue when it counts.

They wind up at a sad, pathetic clearing with a selection of scrawny bovines waiting for the dragons. Bravo eyes them dubiously, then coughs politely and says in a hopeful voice, “Actually, we are perfectly accustomed to fishing for our meals.” Ferrando brightens at this and smiles for the first time since the dragons had landed and he’d said, scowling at the horizon, as though a dozen Regal Coppers and Longwings were going to materialize out of the clouds, ‘But where are the rest of them?’

“Damned glad to hear it, ma’am,” he says gruffly. “That will make supplying our movements across the channel a hell of a lot easier, pardon my language.”

“Oh, your language is quite acceptable,” Bravo replies, clearly puzzled. Ray coughs to hide a smile. Bravo’s not exactly a stranger to vulgarity.

“Hm,” Ferrando says, eyeing her, and then calls over one of the officers that’d been following them around the grounds. “This is Captain Fick, of the HMS Battalion, in command of a squadron of five ships of the line. You’ll be reporting to him as we engage the French in their own ports over the next few months.” Fick salutes the three aviators sharply. Ray blinks—Fick looks all of nineteen years old, big green eyes and slight build. But he has an officer’s bars on his shoulder and a clear, piercing gaze, despite his smooth cheeks. He must be older than he looks, mid-twenties at least. Likely there’s more than him to meets the eye, if he’s been given his own ship and command of a full squadron at such a young age.

Plus he’s got a nice mouth, which Ray feels is only fair. If he’s going to put up with all this bullshit from command, he should at least get something pretty to idly ogle now and again.

“Gentlemen, your focus will be on penning the Frogs from the Channel Islands to the Bay of Biscay,” Ferrando says gruffly, drawing back Ray’s attention. Apparently while he’d been zoning out on Fick’s mouth, Ferrando had been speaking. Brad must have noticed his lack of attention, though hopefully no one else did; he’s hitting Ray with an especially icy stare. Great, like his lieutenant wasn’t already miffed with him. Fuck Ray’s life. “You aviators will have two days to work with Captain Fick and his men to design a series of naval-aerial maneuvers which best maximize our movements across the channel to acquire and lock down our targets.”

After making this pronouncement, Ferrando leaves, the majority of the naval officers following him, and then it’s just Fick and the aviators and three curious dragons.

“So, did I understand him correctly?” Ray asks finally in the silence of the clearing—well, as silent as it can be with the crews swarming over the three dragons, chattering away cheerfully as they remove the heavy harnesses, because apparently they hadn’t heard the ‘doom doom doom, so fucking doomed’ speech they’d just been given. “It sounded an awful lot like we’re meant to be covering the entire Western half of the English Channel, and beyond.”

Fick straightens and looks as though he’s suppressing a wince. “Yes, that’s precisely what we’re meant to be doing, gentlemen.” He pauses. “We rather expected there to be more of you.”

“Hey, you’re getting the best formation in the Corps,” Poke says, leaving out the fact that they’re the only formation capable of sustained fighting, besides Iskierka and the ferals stationed at Dover. Anyway, Ray figures it’s not really lying, since they _are_ the best formation, healthy or otherwise, in his opinion. “But we’re not made of magic. That’s a lot of coastline to cover with only three sets of wings and a couple sets of sails, brother.”

Fick looks uncomfortable as he replies, “I am assured that as soon as the campaign against the Dutch at Copenhagen is completed, we will receive further naval support. And in any wise, we are not to engage the French or any other vessel unless they attempt to enter or leave restricted waters. Our duties are strictly patrolling.”

“That’s basically all the waters, you realize that?” Ray says morosely, and he’s going to continue but he’s suddenly realized that Brad’s staring at their new captain friend and grinning, and that said captain is smiling back incredulously.

“They told me they were sending the best men in the fleet,” Fick says, eyes bright. “I see that they were correct. Hello, Brad, it’s been a while, has it not?”

He’s calling Brad not just by his Christian name—he’s calling him _Brad_. What the fuck.

“Nate,” Brad says, nodding, his voice startled and happy. Ray knows that voice, knows it comes with an unguarded smile, and is suddenly so jealous he can barely breathe. That’s _Ray’s_ smile. Who is this little snot-nosed sailing brat to be given one of the precious, carefully guarded, Bradley Colbert smiles that belong to _Ray_?

“I apologize for the lack of formality,” Fick apologizes, eyes big and earnest and Ray is not falling for this at all. Fick is trying to seduce away his lieutenant, and Ray had him first, goddammit. Just because they’ve had a falling out doesn’t mean this fresh-faced upstart can just swan in and befriend him. “I was once Captain James Colbert’s cabin boy,” he explains to the three captains, and oh. Well, fuck. That does explain it, doesn’t it.

Fick is the sort of man Ray’s always imagined Brad would be bosom companions with, in a different life. An earlier life, apparently, a pre-Raymond Person existence. Nathan Fick is well-educated and sophisticated and handsome and clearly brilliant, if he’s been given command of a mission like this one when he’s so young. He’s not a verbally incontinent, buck-toothed coal miner’s son that can barely read a line of Greek and can’t dance or play a hand of whist to save his soul.

“Our fathers were good friends,” Fick is saying, and Poke and Pappy are nodding in understanding, and Ray’s just frozen to the spot and trying with all his might not to actually hover over Brad and piss on his leg and growl ‘ _mine_ , mine, _mine_.’ Little good that would do him anyway—Brad would just disembowel him and then set the remains on fire, probably. He had informed Ray after a particularly trying evening at the bar a few years back that that would be the result if any of Ray’s misguided attempts to urinate landed upon him: fire and disembowelment. “Brad and I used to spend summers together when we were lads, before he swore off the sea forever. I hadn’t known you joined the Corps, Brad. Is one of these your dragon, then?”

“No, sir,” Brad says, and his voice has gone stiffly formal. Ray wants to bite something. Or punch something, whichever—he’d like a good barfight about now, is what he’d like. “I’m first lieutenant aboard Bravo. May I present my captain, Raymond Person?”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Ray says between clenched teeth, offering a tight smile and lighting up a cigarette. He speaks through a wreath of smoke and a smirk, and is viciously pleased when Fick looks taken aback. “Not quite Brad’s caliber, I’m afraid,” he drawls, “but dragons do get funny turns now and again, and I’m afraid I was somehow chosen instead. Bloody inefficient branch of the military, the Corps, isn’t it, Captain Fick?”

“Ah,” Fick says awkwardly, and Ray is kicked sharply in his ankle. He finds himself treasuring the pain, because he’s an idiot and a tosser and can’t help be pleased that at least Brad is acknowledging someone exists outside the godlike presence of one Nathaniel Fick.

“Person’s too modest,” Brad says icily, and Ray snorts, dragging in another lungful of smoke and rolling his eyes. “Despite his lack of a civil tongue, he’s a brilliant captain, I assure you.”

“How very kind of you to say so, Mr. Colbert,” Ray says snipply, his nails cutting into his palms as he clenches his fist. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Poke and Pappy staring at him like he’s started speaking Greek or, heaven forbid, fucking French. Ray bets that Fick speaks fluent Latin, Greek, and French. Probably Mandarin Chinese and Dutch, too. Fuck, Ray needs to rein himself in—Brad’s ignoring him, anyway. No more kicks to the ankle, just icy silence.

What is truly unfortunate about the situation is that Ray has been forced to secretly swear himself Fick’s archenemy, when he actually suspects that under other circumstances he would like the man very much. After introducing himself to the captains, Fick marches up to the dragons themselves, heedless of their size and teeth, and offers them a bow. Bravo is charmed, that much is certain, and immediately begins cheerfully interrogating the Captain on the number of battles he has been engaged in. In fact, the two have to be interrupted so that the dragons can take to the air and catch their dinners before it gets too dark. Fick looks a bit abashed, and it makes Ray all the more annoyed when Brad grins at him teasingly.

“I had forgotten,” Brad says, crooked smile on his face, “how you always carried around those carved dragons in your pockets. Still have a fondness for aviators and their charges, then, sir? I can assure you, it is a much less romantic occupation than you and I imagined as children.”

It is inappropriate to talk so casually to a commanding officer, at least to one outside the Aerial Corps, and it annoys Ray even further that Fick just blushes slightly and grins back.

“Now’s not the time for childhood reminiscing, Brad,” he chides gently, and then straightens, all seriousness and steel as he lays out the Anglewing formation’s tasks for the coming days. He takes them to his map room in the fort, and they stand around a table that has seen hard use, but is scrupulously clean. Brad, who is something of a complete nutter for maps and navigation, promptly begins fawning over the models and globes and sextants.

“You know, we should really wait for the dragons to get back from their meal to discuss strategy,” Ray says, interrupting their chatter over Mercator lines. He’s cleaning his fingernails with his short dagger, blatantly ill-mannered, relishing the glare Brad is shooting him. He’ll take negative attention over no attention at all. He’s being childish, he knows, but he can’t bring himself to mind.

Nate looks momentarily confused, and then brightens so much it’s kind of ridiculous. Ray is resolutely not charmed.

“I hadn’t even thought,” Nate starts, smiling, and then says, “I apologize, gentlemen.” And he goes himself to throw open the windows looking out into the clearing and they all sit to wait for the girls to return. Brad starts talking to Nate about taking him up for a short flight on Bravo in the morning, to give him a real feel for the aerial maneuvers they’re going to be discussing. He doesn’t even ask Ray’s permission. Not that Ray usually minds that sort of behavior—Bravo is, to his mind, as much Brad’s dragon as Ray’s. But this is different. This time he minds, rather a lot.

The girls come back a few minutes later and crowd around the two windows looking into the room, peering at the candle-lit table, and Nate proclaims that he will have it set up in their clearing in the morning, or possibly that a modified, larger version might be created, that they can look upon it with ease. Ray normally would be fucking ecstatic over a naval man treating their dragons so well. Instead he’s tossing his knife idly in the air and catching it by the blade and trying not to grimace too obviously or look like he’s thinking about tossing it in Nate’s direction.

It is very stupid. This is one of the first fruitful conversations Ray’s ever had with a member of another military branch. But Brad spends the entire evening staring at Fick and smiling slightly, catching his eyes at every opportunity. He doesn’t look at Ray once. Not _once_. Not even when Ray flicks one of the tiny brass figurines meant to represent a ship at his head. He just bats it out of the air with uncanny precision and goes back to mooning over Fick. And ignoring Ray. Ray hates being ignored and he has been ignored all damned day.

If Ray weren’t so very certain Brad had a fondness for pussy, he’d think Fick was Brad’s childhood sweetheart or something. But that can’t possibly be the case. Brad likes women, long-limbed and sweetly curved, with wicked smiles. Ray has meticulously catalogued all of Brad’s conquests over the years. Brad likes women, exclusively.

Except… except there had been that one quick kiss they’d shared yesterday in Dover.

Except for the fact that if Brad were to lay with a man, and mean it—want it—it would be with a man like Nate Fick.

After the meeting’s ended and they’re all going their separate ways, Ray stops to take a look at Fick’s bookshelf—and yes, fucker definitely has the same copy of Herodotus that Brad has, and probably the same books of Scottish poetry too, Christ. He’s scowling at the shelf and then realizes he hears voices, and oh, sensational. He’s going to have the entirely dubious pleasure of overhearing a conversation between his first lieutenant and their new commanding officer in the hallway. His life is just that grand.

“Captain Fick,” Brad is saying, low and pleased, and Ray backs against the wall, out of sight, or so he hopes. He can just see Brad in the hall, smiling and bowing slightly, his hands behind his back. Fick, the baby-faced, green-eyed little bastard, is smiling back up at Brad, and he replies in a stupidly syrupy voice, “Yes, Lieutenant Colbert?”

“I wondered if you might join me over dinner to continue our discussions on the formation’s past experience with collaborating with naval forces.”

“And to catch up over a bottle of Madeira, I hope,” Fick says, crinkling his nose and smiling. He looks like an infant when he does that, Ray can’t help but notice. A stupid, red-cheeked _infant_. “I’m afraid I must decline, or at least postpone the offer. One of our ships is being refitted with top of the line cannons, and I’ll rest easier if I see the work myself before she’s declared ready for active duty. I hope I can make it up to you later?”

“On the contrary, it’s refreshing to see a superior officer take genuine interest in his charges, I assure you. That hasn’t often been my experience during our engagements thus far.”

Ray feels this is an intentional slight on his captaincy. It must be. He crosses his arms and ponders what possible way he could get back at Brad for any of this. He could set Brad to teaching the ensigns penmanship, or geometry, perhaps, but Brad is an annoyingly good teacher and would probably enjoy the opportunity to broaden young minds, the fucker.

“Perhaps a late dinner, then?”

God, Ray hates this. He doesn’t want to hear this conversation. He seriously gives thought to jumping out one of the windows, but it’d likely make a racket, he supposes. Instead he dithers over the bookshelf for a while and tries not to listen to the banter in the hallway. He pokes idly at the gilded spine of _Paradise Lost_ and the heavy tome emblazoned with seashells by someone called Lamarck. Who has time to read all this bullshit in the middle of a war? He picks up a copy of Swift’s novel and glares at it, waiting for the two gits outside to move off so he can go sulk and be coddled by his dragon, and scowls at the book. He flips a couple pages, looking for pictures, and then jumps about a foot in the air when a hand slams down on the book, tilting it sharply.

“I had no idea you could read upside-down, Raymond,” Brad drawls, mouth slanted in an unimpressed line. “How famous of you.”

“I can do all sorts of things,” Ray sniffs, tugging the book back and willing his heart to stop pounding. Brad doesn’t let go and Ray lets off pretending he’s not glaring; he is totally glaring. He wishes his glare could set Brad on fire. “You think you know everything, but you don’t, I hate to tell you. I don’t mean to break your heart, Bradley. I know you bank on being all-knowing, all-seeing.”

“And yet,” Brad bites out precisely, glaring right back, “I’m not the one listening in on private conversations.”

“Well, I didn’t want to interrupt,” Ray jeers, wrestling the book free—okay, not really, Brad lets go and Ray nearly falls on his ass. He makes up for it by shoving the book back on the shelf, deliberately in the wrong place, with the military histories. Take that, Captain Green Eyes. Your book is misshelved. Have fun invading Lilliput. “You seemed to have a lot to discuss.”

“Ray,” Brad says, exasperated, but his mouth twitches slightly and Ray notices he leaves the book where it is, which is like a minor victory. Ray is pretty sure Brad noticed what Ray’s subtle attempts at mutiny, there.

“Brad,” Ray says back, but instead of coming out mocking it sounds plaintive, vulnerable. He scowls and rubs a hand over his treacherous mouth.

Brad watches him silently for a moment, eyes shuttered, and then says, “Do you have a problem with me attending dinner with Captain Fick, sir?”

“Take him to dinner, quote fucking poetry at each other, bring him flowers, do whatever the hell you please, Lieutenant. I won’t stop you,” Ray says, and fumbles in his pockets for his cigarettes. He edges around Brad, or tries to, but Brad’s like a goddamned wall when he wants to be. “I get it, Fick’s pretty like a girl, but there’s no call to come over all bashful now, Brad.” Brad stares at him, unmoving. “What, do you want a fucking chaperone? Are you twelve? You’ve got the stones to woo him like a man. Buck the fuck up and get out of my fucking way. That’s an order, in case you missed it.”

“I’m beginning to think you don’t have the slightest fucking clue what I want, Captain,” Brad spits out, color high on his cheeks, and he looks furious, like he might be about to punch Ray in the jaw. Ray beats him to it and shoves him into the bookshelf, full of pretention and brilliance and culture and all the things Ray will never fucking be, and stalks out. He lights a cigarette in the hallway, slows down with his hands trembling, and listens. There’s a sound like a curse, and what might be books falling, and Ray doesn’t wait around to hear anything more.


	5. Chapter 5

“Ray,” Bravo grumbles, twitching her tail, and Ray leaves off singing about the perfidy of sailors and the numerous diseases they pick up in every port of call, craning his head to look up at her. It is very dark now, the sun long set, but there is a full moon and he can see the ivory glint of her teeth and the narrowed slits of her eyes.

“Yes, buttercup? Is something wrong?”

“Only that I am trying to sleep,” she says pointedly, rearranging herself and flapping her wings with a decidedly irritated air. “And you will not stop singing about dickrot, which sounds very unpleasant and is not restful at _all_.”

“Oh,” Ray says, sheepish, and huddles down in his coat. It is cold out in this stupid paddock, and Brad is probably inside the fort somewhere, flushed with good wine and food and smiling at stupid Captain Fick and his stupid tales of stupid heroics on the high seas. And now even his dragon is annoyed with him. “Sorry.”

Bravo sighs and flicks him with the tip of her tail; he will have a bruise on his arm in the morning, but he supposes he deserves it, so he doesn’t complain.

“No, I am awake now. You might as well tell me what is wrong and who has been troubling you, and I will go stomp them and then we can go to sleep.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Ray protests, and makes to get up. “I’ve been keeping you awake, and we’ve only a few days before we take off on this blockading madness. You should rest.”

“Something is so wrong,” Bravo protests lowly and traps him within a cage of her talons, peering at him. “You have been very quiet lately, and I wish to know why. I am your dragon, I should know if something is amiss with you.”

“I’m not quiet,” Ray seethes, and then sighs and pillows his arms on one enormous claw. “Am I quiet? I am trying to be normal.”

“You are not talking half as much as you normally do,” she assures him. “I noticed in the map room. You just played with that tiny knife and glared a lot, and said very little, even though the conversation was quite interesting. I was going to ask you about it, only then you took forever to come outside and when you did you only smoked and drank rum and sang songs and did not want to talk to me.”

“The conversation was not that interesting,” Ray says, scowling. “Did you really think it was interesting? Is Fick just that fantastic? And I always want to talk to you, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Normally you do. And Captain Fick seems very lovely,” Bravo says, sounding taken aback. “We are going flying in the morning. I am going to show him how very fast and clever we are, and then he will better understand how we can trounce the French together. It will be quite fun, I think. He seems very fond of dragons; it is sad he is stuck with a boring ship instead.”

“Traitor,” Ray accuses miserably. “Why don’t you just take him for captain and then you _and_ Brad will be blissfully happy, and I will go live in a cave and eat worms and those creepy fish without eyes.”

“You will not,” Bravo says indignantly, forgetting to whisper. “I would dig you out, and then Brad would shake you, which is quite right. You are being remarkably silly, and that is saying a lot. You are often quite ridiculous, you know.”

Ray mumbles into her scales unhappily and doesn’t respond or look up. His own dragon thinks Fick is marvelous. A cave is sounding better and better. He’s sure he saw some on the flight in; he could live there and try to grow a beard that wasn’t all patches and eat raw fish and scare the local townspeople. They’d call him the Zany Ragamuffin Aviator and children would throw stones at him and he’d gibber and make beer out of seaweed and froth all over his facial hair. It’d be miserable. It sounds perfect.

“You,” Bravo says after a moment, with an air of smug realization, “are jealous. Hah! And it serves you right, after all your talk of how brilliant Captain Granby is, when he is not a patch on Captain Fick, who is very noble and kind and thinks I am the loveliest, most capable dragon he ever saw.”

“Damn straight you are,” Ray mutters, and prudently does not address the rest of the sentence.

“Well, I will not stomp Captain Fick, he is very nice. So we will have to fix this some other way,” she says, with an air that suggests she thinks she is being very sensible.

“You don’t have to fix anything,” Ray tells her, and paws at coat pocket for his flask of rum, which is unfortunately half-empty, which means he is not going to be able to get nearly drunk enough to navigate this conversation without clawing his own eyes out. “Nothing needs to be fixed, everything is, what’s it, copacetic. Everything is peachy, wonderful. Delightful.”

“It is not,” Bravo says, snorting. “You are not allowed to be upset. You are my captain, and we will fix this together. Even though you were very cruel before and a great hypocrite, I do not want you to be jealous of Fick. You know I love you best.”

“Well, I would hope so,” Ray says, mollified slightly, and then she continues.

“And Brad loves you best too, and he will tell you so when he gets back from dinner.”

“He’ll probably just tell me what a smashing dinner it was and how fabulous Fick’s conversation is,” Ray says morosely, then immediately realizes his mistake when she rumbles interestedly and lowers her head to look at him more closely, her pupils wide and black in the scant light of the moon.

“That is why you are so upset? You are upset that he has gone to dinner with Nate?” she asks interestedly, lashing her tail, and Ray moans and covers his eyes. And it’s _Nate_ , now, apparently. God, that’s annoying.

“I’m not upset! Just, leave it,” he begs. He takes another swig of rum and prays it will help. It doesn’t. “And please, for the love of Christ, don’t bring it up with Brad. Brad doesn’t need to know about this conversation ever. _Ever_.”

“You want to mate with Brad!” Bravo says brightly, out of fucking nowhere. Ray has a small heart attack. “That makes very good sense; I think you should do it. I do not like you mating with all these random people. This is much better. Brad will take excellent care of you, and we will not have to share you with anyone else.”

“Nooooo,” Ray moans incredulously. “How did you even guess that? You couldn’t possibly have guessed that, I haven’t said anything! And not that I _do_ want to tup Brad, mind, because I _don’t_.”

“You do!” she croons excitedly. “I can tell! You have that look upon your face, and sometimes it means you are hungry, but I know you ate at dinner. I was worried, because you seemed so out of sorts, and I asked Walt and he said you ate well and stole all of the trifle and snarled at him.” Walt is going down later, Ray vows. He’s going to figure out some thankless, godforsaken task and assign Walt to it forever. Something involving dragon dung, possibly. “So I think it must be that you want to mate with Brad, and are cross he has gone out with Captain Fick instead.”

“I do not want to mate with Brad,” Ray repeats miserably. The rum is not helping in the slightest. She snorts and Ray deflates sulkily.

“You do _so_ ,” she says, twitching her tail minutely, sounding hugely amused.

Ray gives it up. “I do,” he admits grumpily. “I want to rub myself all over him with my egg spurs and never let him leave the bed, ever, and buy him all the crazy stupid pointless maps of the Macedonian empire and Faerie and fucking—fucking _Worchester_ in the entire world.”

“He does like maps a great deal,” Bravo concurs thoughtfully. “That sounds like a fine idea, although I do think perhaps something shiny and gold would be good too. Also, I thought human males did not have egg spurs, but testicles? Yes, bollocks, that was what Lilley called them.”

“Compass,” Ray mumbles, wondering vaguely why that fucknut Lilley had been talking to Bravo about bollocks. “I could get him a shiny fucking sextant. With tourmalines. Pink ones.”

“That sounds lovely, Ray,” Bravo says earnestly, nudging him encouragingly with her nose. “We have amassed some capital these last few months, have we not, with all our victories? You should buy him one immediately. He will be quite pleased, I am sure.”

“He would probably make me eat it,” Ray tells her sadly. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter. Brad doesn’t want me.”

“Ray, you are being stupid, again,” Bravo protests. “Brad will be very happy to have you, you are the best man in existence, obviously. You are my captain, and you have said you are quite good at sex. Why would he not want you?”

“Well, you are a little biased, aren’t you? And he doesn’t like men, not really. He likes women. And anyway, if Brad _did_ make an exception and fall for a man, it for damned sure wouldn’t be for me. Nate, maybe. Not me.”

“Well, why not?” Bravo asks, sounding affronted. Her tail is beginning to lash dangerously again; Ray’s starting to fear for the nearby outbuildings. “You are quite handsome for a human, I think, and excellent with a sword or with a rifle. And he looks at you quite often, and he was very jealous over Captain Granby, too. I think he wants to mate with you as well. What is the word, for men? To sod you, that is right.”

“Shhh,” Ray says despondently. “Don’t be vulgar, people can hear you.” And then he bites his lip, cannot help but ask: “What do you mean, he looks at me?”

“Like he is hungry!” Bravo affirms, nodding sagely, like she is the font of all human knowledge on sexuality. “Even after he has already eaten. For humans, that means they want to have sex, does it not? This is quite exciting. You should tell him you would like to give him pleasure with your mouth. Human men like that quite a lot, from what you have said. I am sure you would be good at it, Ray, you are good at everything, and you can give him a jeweled compass or globe or something later.”

“I hate to break it to you, love, but I’m not much good at most things,” Ray says, deflating. Bravo is a brilliant dragon, there’s no doubt, but he sincerely doubts Brad has ever looked at him like that, with hunger. More like with ‘must keep an eye on coal-bred halfwit so he doesn’t get us all killed,’ if anything.

He tilts what is left of the rum into his mouth, letting the flask fall to the ground with a hollow thud. He keeps thinking of Nathan, bright-eyed and intelligent and beautiful. Ray is scarred and stupid and can't shut up, and he has no idea how Brad has withstood his company all these years, has been glad but mystified, and now Brad has found someone better, and that's good, except Ray sort of wants to die. He sighs. “I’m hardly good at anything, really. Good at talking. That’s it. I’m loud. No one in their right mind would choose me, not for keeps. Too loud. I drink too much coffee.”

“I am in my right mind,” Bravo says, sounding a bit cross, and normally Ray would tease her over it, but he’s too busy wallowing in self-pity at the moment, but as she continues he finds himself going pink and astonished. “And I like very much when you talk. You talk wonderfully. You tell the best stories of anyone. That is why I chose you. All the other humans did not have nearly so much to say, even Brad, whom you know I like very well. But you say everything, and it is always true, even if you do exaggerate.”

Ray cannot speak for a moment. “Thank you,” he says hoarsely, and she nuzzles him.

“So very silly,” she says fondly.

“Silly is one word for it,” a voice says, and Ray is entirely sure that his heart has stopped. If someone shot him at this exact moment, his blood wouldn’t run. It’s all frozen in his veins, pooling in his chest and catching thick in throat, making him choke.

Maybe he’s hallucinating—the bloke he’d bought the rum from had looked a bit dodgy. Maybe he’d slipped wormwood in it.

“You twits do realize everyone with an open window can hear you?” Brad asks in a terrifyingly even voice, and he’s entirely in darkness. Ray can’t see his face, but he has a sneaking suspicion Brad is less than pleased with him. Maybe if he hunkers down in Bravo’s talons, Brad will disappear and this will be some odd and terrible dream. But, now that he thinks of it, he and Bravo had left off whispering about halfway through the conversation, and neither of them are especially quiet even when they are trying to keep their voices down. Bravo talking at a normal volume—Ray blanches. Christ, everyone in the entire fort probably _had_ heard them.

“They are quite loud,” Marisol agrees, grumbling, raising her head. Her great yellow eyes gleam in the moonlight, narrow and obviously annoyed. “Some of us are trying to sleep.” She noses Anima and sighs. “Of course she can sleep through anything, but some of us are more particular. Do be quiet, Bravo.”

“Oh, as though you would be quiet if it were Tony who was upset,” Bravo says indignantly, straightening, and incidentally letting go of Ray and exposing him to Brad.

Brad stands above him, staring down silently, blocking out the stars.

“Um,” Ray says, sprawling in the dirt, ignoring the squabbling of the dragons beside him. “Did you… hear much of that?”

“We all heard much of that,” Brad says pointedly, hauling Ray to his feet.

“I, ah, hope I didn’t interrupt your dinner,” Ray offers feebly, wincing as Brad takes a firm grip on his arm and begins towing him off towards the barracks. “With Fick. I mean, Nathan. Nate. He seems… quite nice. A good bloke. Erm. Sorry about all the, ah, talk of sodding. Maybe he didn’t hear? Or maybe he didn’t hear clearly. Maybe he… misinterpreted. Somehow. In a good way.”

“Ray, be quiet,” Brad interrupts tersely, and Ray shuts up. This is it. The face of his death. He can see it in the broad lines of Brad’s back, the tense muscles and the way his shoulders are hunched, can feel it in how his wrist is currently being bruised black and blue in Brad’s grip. Brad’s going to beat him to death with a shoe, like he always threatened to do when they were children. Ray has finally tipped the scales with his inappropriate conversation, and Brad is going to toss him off a cliff, or actually find him a muzzle, or possibly just read military ordinances about standards of proper etiquette at Ray until he dies of sheer boredom. All cruel and unusual and preferable to Brad being horrified and disgusted with Ray, which Ray’s trying not to think about. Surely Brad wouldn’t be holding on to Ray’s wrist so tightly, skin on skin, fingers on Ray’s pulse, if he were actually repulsed, would he?

Brad leads him through the shadowed halls at a quick, steady pace, and the smart sound of his boots against the stone is completely at odds with the frantic, uneven beat of Ray’s heart. They pass some of their crew, and Ray’s about to maybe ask for help, crack a joke about his impending funeral, but Brad drags him inexorably onward, and Ray almost thinks he hears a growl, so he snaps his mouth shut on a nervous witticism and tries not to trip over his own feet.

“Um, Brad?” he asks, voice annoyingly uncertain. “Where are we going?”

“Your room,” Brad says flatly, and opens the door, gestures Ray in. Ray balks, and Brad’s eyes glint strangely. “Raymond,” he says, and that is definitely a growl, and Ray definitely does not squeak and dart across the threshold upon hearing it.

Huh, he has time to think. There’s no vat of vipers or riflemen or guillotine blades waiting for them. Maybe Brad’s not as angry as Ray thought. Maybe he just wants to chew Ray out in private. And then Brad’s shoving him up against the closed door and just staring at him. He’s breathing shallowly, and his eyes are huge and dark. Ray feels something shift in his brain, slotting facts and memories and impressions together like clockwork gears. His mouth drops open.

“You—I thought you were angry with me,” he says weakly, just before Brad kisses him.

Brad’s got Ray’s hands up over his head, pinned effortlessly against the door, and Ray’s never before felt the differences in their heights as keenly as he does at this moment. Brad has one hand wrapped around both Ray’s wrists and another at the small of his back, pressing their hips together, and he’s towering over Ray and kissing him like he wants to steal the breath from Ray’s lungs. Ray can’t move, but he can’t stay quiet, either, can’t keep from moaning into Brad’s mouth and trying to curse and say Brad’s name all at once, desperate and disbelieving. He feels like he’s dreaming. Brad’s hard—hard against Ray’s hip, and it’s entirely possible Ray might come in his trousers like a schoolboy, right this second.

“I am angry with you,” Brad breathes against Ray’s mouth, between kisses, and then presses their foreheads together. “You’ve done a number of things over the last few days, Captain Person, that have made me exceedingly angry. Let’s examine them together.”

“Huh?” Ray says, dazed, and then has to struggle to stay on his feet as Brad releases him.

“Get on the bed,” Brad says casually, and when Ray just slumps against the wall and stares at him for a moment, he smiles slightly. “Do you really want to add to the list of your wrongdoings, Captain Person? Then I suggest you hustle. No, on your back. Lay down. Yes, that’s good, Ray, like that.”

Ray lies down awkwardly on the hard mattress—this isn’t exactly luxury, here. The room’s musty and the only light comes from a few flickering candles in the corner, but he’s not complaining, definitely not, because Brad is watching him, arms crossed, leaning against the bedpost and smiling slightly. Ray wets his lips and Brad’s attention zeroes in on the movement, Ray sees it. Fuck.

“Holy bollocks,” he breathes, rising up on his elbows, eyes huge. “Bravo was right. You want—” Ray can’t quite say ‘me,’ can’t believe it, even when his mouth is still raw and bruised with Brad’s kiss, when he can see Brad staring at him right now with dark eyes and a hand cupping himself idly through his trousers. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Brad Colbert, the Casanova of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps, you—what the fuck, Brad, I thought you had better taste than this. I thought—”

“Yes, we’ve established that for one of the better captains and tactical thinkers in the Corps, you are a cripplingly stupid man, Ray, but you do have your good qualities, buried somewhere under all the bullshit, so I’ll thank you to leave my tastes out of this. Now, I think we’ve both been laboring under a few key misapprehensions, and we are, by God, going to talk about them. Take off your belt.”

“Wait, I—what the fuck, Brad?” Ray says, and Brad smiles. It makes Ray clutch at the blankets.

“I like that you’re still lying down for me, Ray,” Brad purrs, and Ray goes hot all over. “Now, take off your belt.” Ray does, hands moving automatically.

“You’ve been hiding things from me, Ray,” Brad says, “for a very long time. Now, I understand your reluctance at first, but I admit to being a bit disgruntled at the lack of trust this demonstrates.”

“Oh, come on!” Ray says faintly. “It’s not like you said anything, and I—”

“I did say something,” Brad interrupts, voice sharp, and Ray remembers the look on his face in the baths when Ray’d pushed him away. “And in return, I only got to overhear your drunken, incoherent, addle-pated thoughts on the matter when you’d decided to talk to your dragon about it. Not to me. Open your trousers, Ray. I’m going to watch you touch yourself. Now.”

Ray stares, gaping, and Brad narrows his eyes. “Ah,” Ray says faintly, and then slips his hand below the waist of his breeches, and fuck, he’s so hard already, and Brad’s watching him, moving closer and standing over him. “I didn’t—” he says jerkily, giving himself a tentative stroke and eyes nearly crossing at how insanely good it feels, Brad’s gaze on him heated and as tangible as his own hand, maybe more so. “I thought you felt sorry for me,” he stutters, tries not to pant. “I didn’t think—”

“No, you didn’t think. Thinking has not been your forte, lately. Faster, Ray, don’t act like a fucking vestal virgin, here. Do you need me to show you?” Ray shudders all over as Brad’s hand closes around his. Speeding the pace of his strokes, thumb brushing over the head, where Ray’s already wet and leaking, and Ray moans, can’t bite down on the needy sound he makes soon enough.

“Fuck,” Brad says lowly. “Yes, like that. Fuck, Ray, look at you.”

“Is this meant to be punishment?” Ray gasps, bucking his hips. He can’t stop looking at Brad’s face, the slight flush to his cheeks and the way his mouth has fallen open. “Because I have to say, Lieutenant, it’s not very—ah, Christ—effective, but I’ll be more open with you in the future, I swear—” he breaks off, panting.

“Oh, Ray,” Brad says fondly, and then he leans down and catches Ray’s hand mid-stroke, mouths a messy, wet kiss over Ray’s fingers and Ray’s cock jerks and his eyes roll back in his head. “Mmm,” Brad says. “Now, let’s talk. When in your entire, backwards, coal-fed, word-grubbing, wastrel existence have I ever even slightly intimated that I feel sorry for you? Moreover, when have you ever known me to offer you _pity_?”

“What?” Ray says faintly, and hisses through his teeth as Brad tightens his grip and then lets go.

“Don’t lose speed, Captain, I promise you won’t like the consequences.” Brad’s voice is barely above a whisper, but it’s dark and slightly unsteady and wild, and Ray moans and, if anything, picks up the pace. Fuck, he’s going to explode. “Answer the question.”

“It was a reasonable assessment of the situation,” Ray protests, fighting not to close his eyes. “Brad, I—fuck, I just, you never liked men, what the fuck was I supposed to think, I don’t—”

“I know you’re good with both hands,” Brad interrupts, and Ray shakes his head in protest, can’t think, and Brad takes his left hand and pulls it down to his balls. “Don’t come yet.”

“Brad,” Ray says, eyes wide and throat tight. “Christ, I can’t—fuck, Brad, please let me—I want to touch you before I— _please_.”

“Yes,” Brad says, sounding dazed, and then bites his lower lip. “I mean, no, not yet, you don’t get to touch yet. We’re not done here. But keep talking, Ray. Don’t stop. Tell me what you want.”

“I want,” oh god, Ray wants so much he feels like his tongue’s going to trip over itself getting it all out. “I want you on top of me and I want to touch and fuck, Brad, your hands, please, why are you so—please touch me,” he begs, and Brad leans over him and Ray’s hips strain up frantically. “I’m sorry, I should have said something, should have told you, but it’s you, and I wanted you for so long, and—”

Brad stops him, cuts him off with a kiss, lewd brilliant tongue and the taste of salt and skin, climbing on top of Ray and straddling his hips. Ray moans into him, bucking upward, and Brad hums back, pleased. It’s hot and filthy and then Brad breaks off and whispers into Ray’s mouth, “Come now.” And Ray does, comes with a sharp cry all over his own fingers and then falls back in the tangled blankets, dazed.

“You should have trusted me. You should have told me at the beginning. And that’s one,” Brad says huskily, and Ray has time to think, ‘What? One what?’ before Brad’s biting his throat, sending shivers all up and down Ray’s spine, and then there’s a hand swiping through the mess on his lower belly. Ray lets out a low, helpless noise and then Brad’s smearing wetness on his lips and Ray can taste it, taste himself.

“Yes,” Brad says breathlessly in Ray’s ear, and fuck, Ray’s getting hard again, just like that. “Yeah, just like that, fuck, your mouth, Ray, you’ve got such a perfect cocksucking mouth, don’t you. Oh—”

Ray’s a little smug at that choked off noise, the startled sound Brad makes when Ray swirls his tongue around Brad’s fingers and mouths between his knuckles. Then Brad’s pulling his hand away and Ray’s the one making a needy noise, missing the fullness of Brad’s hand in the mouth, wants Brad’s skin back beneath his teeth and tongue.

“Yeah, you want it,” Brad breathes unsteadily, and bites just below Ray’s ear. “Say you want it.”

“Fuck you, you know I want it,” Ray says, letting his eyes slip close, breathing heavily.

“It makes me so fucking angry I can barely speak, Ray,” Brad says conversationally, and Ray’s eyes snap back open. He’s still straddling Ray’s hips and he’s staring right at him, eye to eye. Ray goes still, hypnotized. So fucking blue, Brad’s eyes. “Thinking of you doing this with those other men, when it should have been me. It would have been me, if you’d just said something. When I first found out about it, I was so angry with you, and I didn’t know why, not exactly. I didn’t think less of you. That’s not it at all. And I admit I was a bit infuriated to find it out from a stranger, rather than from you.” Ray aches, opens his mouth to apologize, but Brad’s not done talking. “But more than that, I couldn’t stop thinking of it, of you with those men. You fucking them. Them fucking you. Did you think of me when you were with them, Ray? Tell me.”

“Yes,” Ray hisses out between his teeth, too desperate to be embarrassed, bucking his hips up against Brad. “God, yes, Brad, I—Jesus!”

Brad’s taken himself out of his trousers, and he’s long and hard and touching himself, and Ray wants, oh fuck, he wants, but Brad’s got one hand on Ray’s chest, pinning him down, and he can’t reach and it’s driving him mad.

“I thought about it, pictured it. And you know what I found out, Ray?” He leans down and looks Ray in the face, says sharply. “I found out I hated it. Because you’re mine. Those men shouldn’t get to have you, shouldn’t get any part of you.”

“They didn’t,” Ray says, trying to struggle up, and oh god, Brad’s just pushing him down harder; he’s going to have a bruise in the shape of Brad’s hand on his chest, and he fucking loves it. He had no idea that he’d love it like this. “It was always—it was always about you, fuck.”

“Tell me what you thought about,” Brad says, eyes half-lidded. He’s stroking himself insanely slow, it’s driving Ray crazy just to look. “Ray.”

“Your hands,” Ray says automatically, and he can’t decide where to look. Brad’s face, his hand, the sweat gleaming on his chest. Ray’s not a teenager any more, his cock shouldn’t be filling again so quickly, oversensitive and hard, but it is, and the friction of Brad’s movement against him is so pleasurable it almost hurts. “Everything about you. I want to suck you, please—Brad, God, please, I want to touch you, please let me.”

“When we’re done here,” Brad says evenly, “you won’t know anyone’s name but mine. And then you can touch me wherever and whenever you want. But you’re mine first, do you understand? Now. Tell me what you want.” And he’s slowly unbuttoning Ray’s shirt as he speaks. Ray can barely even talk, he’s so turned on, and Brad is managing to jack off, talk, and undress Ray all at the same time. In some distant corner of Ray’s mind that isn’t a mass of jangling lust, he’s not surprised.

Ray gets it now, gets the punishment—tell Brad all about the things he wants but can’t have, not yet, but Ray can tell Brad’s on the edge too, however good a show of control he’s putting on. Ray can still barely fucking believe it, that he can make Brad look like that. He licks his lips and lies back and tests it.

“Brad. Bradley, I do have a cocksucking mouth, I’m so good at it,” he says roughly, and grins darkly when Brad goes suddenly still. “Believe me, you have _no_ idea how good. Have the girls you’ve been with sucked you off? I can take you so deep, your huge cock, look at it, you’re so hard, Brad and my mouth’s so fucking filthy, isn’t it, filthy and wet and all yours. Brad, it’ll feel so good, please let me, god, I’ll make it so good for you.”

“I know you will,” Brad says huskily, pupils blown and dark, irises the thinnest ring of blue. “Not yet, oh fuck, Ray. Keep talking.” His hand’s speeded up and he’s fallen forward, pressing Ray into the bed, and his hair’s come loose and is drifting gold in the candlelight, and Ray _wants_. He tries to struggle up and can’t, still can’t. Fuck, Brad’s so fucking strong. He feels his cock jerk involuntarily as he arches up into Brad’s hand.

“Brad, it was always you, I always thought of you and this and how you’d look, and this is so much better, so much,” he says, moans, and he can barely think, barely articulate anything at all. Brad leans down and kisses him, pants through it, and then comes over Ray’s chest in a hot wet splash and Ray jerks beneath him.

“Mine,” Brad whispers, and then collapses on top of him, kissing his neck and snaking a hand between them, and oh Christ, that’s a hand on his dick, right now, Brad’s hand on his dick, and Brad just came all over him. Ray makes a keening noise, doesn’t know where to move, and he’s hard again, fuck. When Brad arches up and looks Ray in the face and says, “Now,” Ray does, comes right then, right there, comes all over Brad’s fingers and then maybe passes out for a moment, vision sparkling.

When he swims back to consciousness, Brad’s shucked off his trousers and smallclothes and is pressing kisses all over Ray’s belly, tongue thoughtfully tasting the seed he’d left there, and Ray’s cock gives a weak, helpless twitch.

“Mmm,” Brad rumbles. “Good boy, Ray. That’s two.”

“Brad,” Ray says, pained, and wants to struggle upright, but all his muscles have turned to taffy or tar, liquid and useless in the heat of this. “Brad, you’re going to fucking kill me.”

“No, I’m not,” Brad says, eyelashes tickling Ray’s skin as he rubs his face over Ray like some kind of gigantic, scorchingly hot cat. Marking him. Fuck. “And you’re not done yet. Remember how you avoided me for days? Remember that, Ray?”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Ray says, and he’s serious, if he’d known—he feels like the worst kind of heel, remembering how Brad had looked when Ray shoved him away: as though Ray had swung around and cold-cocked him, shocked and confused and hurt.

“I know,” Brad says, nuzzling him. “Ray, can I fuck you?”

“Can you—yes?” Ray says weakly. “You want to? But you need—but I, Brad, I didn’t think you even knew—”

“Oh, you want to talk about what I want now, do you?” Brad says idly, and then stretches and reaches for something on the bedstand, and Ray’s entire body thrums like a plucked bowstring when he recognizes it—a pot of oil they use on the harnesses. Brad’s body is golden and perfect in the candlelight, and he’s settling between Ray’s legs with a wicked smirk, and Ray is going to die, he really is. “You certainly didn’t want to talk about it before.”

“It’s hard to talk about,” Ray says feebly, and then moans Brad’s name and writhes.

“Hold still, Person,” Brad says, sounding fascinated, watching his own fingers moving in and out of Ray’s body, and that’s enough right there to nearly kill Ray, and if he hadn’t just come twice, each time so hard his muscles had dissolved and bones gone to jelly, he’d be getting hard again, right now. “Fuck, Ray, you’re so fucking tight.”

“Yeah, like that, do you?” Ray says, trying to breathe, get some semblance of control back. “Gonna like it when it’s around your cock, Brad?” And Brad looks up at him from lowered lashes, smirks, and twists his fingers, and Ray’s hips leave the bed. “Fuck fuck fuck,” he bites out. “Fuck, Brad, you fucking tease, God.”

“You think I’m the tease, do you,” Brad says mildly, but his voice is trembling a bit. “Ray, you—yeah, I like that. I’m going to like it. And you’ll feel me all tomorrow, all the day after, and you’ll know it was me inside you, and you’ll love it. It’ll make you hard all over again, won’t it, knowing it was me that fucked you.”

“Yes, yes, fucking _do_ it already,” Ray retorts, eyes screwed shut, trying to get better leverage on Brad’s fingers and whining helplessly when Brad just pins his hips down with his free hand.

“Not yet,” Brad says hoarsely. “Come on, Ray,” and then he’s, oh fuck no, Ray really can’t, he really will die.

“You can, darling,” Brad croons, and lets go of Ray’s hip to dip his fingers back in the oil and wrap them around Ray’s half-hard cock, and Ray keens miserably. “Do it for me.”

“I can’t, Brad, oh god, your hands, you fucker, I can’t, I can’t.” Ray doesn’t even know if he’s talking out loud or not anymore, if he’s just writhing helplessly, trying to get more of Brad’s hands, trying to get away from them, but Brad’s everywhere and he loves it and it’s killing him.

“You’re so good, Ray, and you’re mine,” punctuated by a sharp nip to Ray’s thigh, then a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the same place, and Ray’s entire body is on fire, he’s going to die. “Come on, for me, darling. God, like that, look at you. Fucking beautiful. No one else gets to see this ever again, you understand me? No one.”

“Brad,” Ray whispers, and comes. He lays there and listens to Brad praise him, dazed and stupid with it, and then fuck, Brad wants him to move, Brad’s fucking insane.

“I’ll make it so good,” Brad promises thickly, kisses Ray’s stomach and then helps him roll over. Ray’s shaky and helpless and fuck, fuck, he can barely think. Brad, it’s Brad telling him to get on his knees, that he’s being so good, that Brad can barely stand even looking at him, he’s wanted it so long and Ray’s so perfect, look at him, being so fucking good. “I'll take such good care of you.”

“Get on with it, Colbert, Christ,” Ray manages to grit out, getting his knees under him and shaking sweaty hair out of his eyes. He wants to just lay there and never move again, but it’s Brad, and Brad will mock him for the rest of his life if he gives up now, and so he manages. He’s rewarded with a wet kiss to the small of his back and Brad’s shaky breath against his skin, panting. “What are you doing,” Ray says unsteadily. “Writing a sonnet back there?”

Brad laughs, surprised and husky, and says, “Well, you do have a surprisingly lovely arse, Ray.” And Ray’s about to say something snippy back, but then he can’t say anything at all except a random collection of syllables, a noise that’s not a word in any language whatsoever. He has space to think that Brad really, really shouldn’t be this good at sodomy, it’s not _fair_ , Ray’s been a sodomite for years and years and no one in the world is this good at it. But Brad’s good at everything, isn’t he.

“Should have thought of that earlier,” Brad moans, and plasters himself against Ray’s back, sweat slick and moving on top of him, and it’s so good, nothing should be this good. He wants this forever, never wants it to stop, the slow build of it, so intensely pleasurable it hurts. “Ray,” Brad moans, and then slips a hand beneath Ray’s belly and Ray’s practically in tears, shaking his head and saying no soundlessly.

“Ray, please,” Brad says, “please, just one more, for me, just for me, come on,” and his voice is hoarse and shaky, and it’s Brad, and his hips are slamming into Ray’s and he’s hitting something inside Ray over and over again that’s making pleasure spark through him like lightning, like fire through sails, and Ray’s face is wet. “Ray, Ray, fuck, god, you feel—come on, darling, you can do it, Ray, fuck.”And Ray comes dry, sobbing, and feels Brad follow him.

“So good for me, so fucking good. I’m never letting anyone else touch you, ever,” he hears, Brad’s kissing his face. “You’re such an idiot, can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t—”

“Do you ever shut up?” Ray slurs, and is distantly smug to hear Brad’s startled laugh. “Lay down. This is the part where we sleep, twit.”

“Thanks, I’d never have guessed,” Brad grumbles, and then wraps himself around Ray, nose in his hair, just behind his ear. Everything’s warm, and quiet, and aches perfectly, and Ray falls asleep between one heartbeat and the next.

Ray wakes up the next morning to Brad running a hand through his hair, kissing his temple.

“Hi,” Ray says muzzily, after he’s convinced himself via surreptitious stretching that he’s not dreaming, because no dream could make his balls and bum that fucking sore.

“Good morning, Ray,” Brad says, and Ray can’t quite believe it, that that pleased, cat-that-got-the-cream tone in Brad’s voice is for him.

“What are you even doing here?” Ray wonders aloud, and when Brad goes still as death, he clarifies hastily, twisting in Brad’s arms and looking into his face. “No, I mean—with me. You could have anyone, I know you could. I mean, look at you. People fling themselves at you all the time.” And they do. They see Brad's broad shoulders and aristocratic face and the nobility shining out of every pore of him, and they swoon at his feet, country maidens and elegant young ladies and naval captains all.

Brad doesn’t look mollified at all by this explanation, though. He looks thunderous, and Ray’s a strange mix of worried and aroused. One night and Brad’s already primed his body to respond to his scowls. Fuck.

“I thought we went through this last night,” Brad says evenly, eyes narrowed dangerously. “I want you. I think I always have, honestly. You’re Ray. And you’re mine. I don’t want those people. They don’t even know me, not really. Must we really talk about this?”

“But,” Ray protests, frustrated and insanely happy all at the same time, and he can’t just shut up and let it lie, which is exactly the problem, dammit. He shoves Brad away with a hand to the chest, so that he can actually get a good look at Brad's face, see what he's thinking, because it can’t be this easy. It just can’t. “I drive you fucking crazy, Brad, I know I do. I drive everyone mad. I talk too much and too loudly, and I say stupid crap and annoy the hell out of people, all the time. And—and I don’t know Greek!" Brad gives him a blank look, tempered with disbelief, and Ray babbles helplessly on, unable to stop himself. "Or Latin, or Dutch, or about fucking Boethius or Aristotle or whoever, I mean, aside from the stuff I overhear when you’re lecturing the ensigns about the Romans, I guess. I don’t know anything useful at all. You could have someone—” better “—less obnoxious than me.”

Brad looks pissy, like he’s going to give Ray not an orgasm, but a black eye this time. Which is totally Ray’s goddamned point.

“Look,” Brad grates out, looking hugely annoyed. “Never bring this up again, or I’ll toss you off Bravo into a bloody colony of lepers, but… I like it. When you drive me crazy. I like you and your ceaseless, unending forays into impropriety, alright?” Ray blinks, and Brad tugs him closer again, huffing grumpily into Ray’s hair before speaking again. “Also, stow that fucking garbage. You’re brilliant. You’re a good man. You know more than any educated, foppish twit in any drawing room in London, and you actually think about things, about the things you learn, and have your own opinions, and they're real, and it’s—I like it. I like you, just as you are. Christ, are we done now?” Brad’s blushing and scowling and Ray’s chest feels like a flock of dragons has just landed on it.

“Oh,” Ray says, feeling stupid and shy and like he wants to make Brad a posy of fresh violets and roses and bluebells, which he will never admit out loud, ever. Or at least not until they’re in front of Poke and Pappy and Hasser, when he can turn it into a shared joke, a game. But. Well. Maybe Brad would want to know. Ray hesitates, then spits it out in a rush.

“Well, uh, sometimes I want to bring you flowers, even though bringing you flowers is ridiculous and I think you’d make me eat them or shove them down my trousers or something? But I still want to. So there,” he says defensively, staring at his hands twisting the sheets, and when he ventures to actually look up and check Brad’s response, Brad’s got a funny expression on his face, pink and pleased and annoyed.

“You are entirely correct,” he says after a moment. “And if you begin reciting Wordsworth or Byron or any poetry whatsoever at me, I will toss your arse out of bed.” But he’s got a smile in his voice that sounds an awful lot like the way the sunrise feels, bright and hopeful and new. Ray isn’t going to recite any poetry, but he might start composing some of his own, soon. Dirty poetry in the style of good old Robbie Burns.

“Duly noted, lieutenant,” he says, deciding not to bring up his new literary ambitions for now. He tweaks Brad’s nipple, pleased when Brad makes a startled noise. “So look, okay, I get that I warped you from a young age and somehow tricked you into liking me—” Brad rolls his eyes and is clearly about to protest and make Ray go even soppier and redder than he already is, which is just not acceptable, so Ray presses on hurriedly. “But how you could possibly think _I_ didn’t want you? I mean, I wasn’t exactly subtle. I told you I wanted to take you down my throat on dragonback last time you brought me a cup of coffee.”

“You told Rudy the exact same thing the day before,” Brad points out grumpily, and tugs Ray’s hair sharply, and wow, that’s—Ray winds up purring, and Brad’s eyes go dark. He hums and tilts Ray’s chin up for a kiss, which is a much better way to start the morning than with embarrassingly exposing, heart-warming conversations. “I would much prefer you no longer did that, by the by.”

“But I meant it with you,” Ray says into Brad’s mouth, thrumming with sleep and sex and a wave of incredulous happiness. “I’m totally disillusioned with your observational skills, lieutenant. You’re meant to be able to anticipate my needs before they happen, you know.”

“It was remarkably difficult working out your needs under the circumstances,” Brad says archly, rolling his hips, and Ray whimpers, thinks poetry couldn’t possibly capture any of this, the feeling of heat and hope and shivering need. “My own captain was doing his damnedest to keep me in the dark. You brought this upon yourself.” Then the bastard runs a hand down Ray’s arse, squeezes and then runs a finger tantalizingly lower. He laughs, clearly pleased when Ray moans and bucks his hips into Brad’s touch. “Disgraceful of you, sir.”

“You shut your mouth or I’m going to shut it for you,” Ray pants, and rubs his cock against Brad’s hip meaningfully.

“Hmm,” Brad says thoughtfully, and then Lieutenant Bradley Colbert flips them over, in an astonishing display of agility and skill, and then he begins giving Ray the world’s worst blowjob, and it’s basically the best thing that has ever happened to Ray since, well, since last night, at least.

“Oh my God, you are terrible at this,” Ray moans in disbelief, watching Brad bob his head awkwardly. “No, get your fucking mouth back on my cock immediately, who said you could stop?” Brad looks annoyed as he can be with a mouthful of Ray’s cock, glaring at him and raising an eyebrow, and it’s so hot Ray wants to get someone to come and paint a portrait of it, right now. “You’ll, fuck, you’ll learn, just—less teeth,” he hisses, and tries not to buck his hips. “God, yes, you love it. Brad, oh my god, I can’t even fucking believe you. Look at you, sucking me off and it’s awful, but it’s you, I love you so fucking much you stupid, stupid bastard, fuck—”

Ray doesn’t think he can come again, not so soon after last night, so he just lets Brad go to town for a while and then hauls Brad up and kisses him messily, getting saliva and precome everywhere, over both their faces.

“Ray,” Brad pants, sounding grumpy and happy at the same time, how does he even do that? “You didn’t come.”

“Obviously not,” Ray says, nuzzling his cheek. “You were there last night, my balls are empty. You have drained the reservoir, you lunatic. God, you’re hot, can I suck you now? Please let me, Brad, it’ll be so good.”

“No,” Brad says, sounding faintly embarrassed. “Your hand? Please?”

“But why?” Ray asks, indignant but obliging, spitting in his palm and reaching down. Brad’s hard, and Ray’s finally getting to touch him. There are no hands pinning him to the bed this time. Brad’s splayed out for him, all for Ray, and he’s damned well going to take his time, savor this. He strokes upward, tight and firm, sets a torturously slow pace and marvels at the feel of Brad writhing under him, so responsive. Ray wants to taste, but Brad had told him no, so he doesn’t, not yet.

“Oh, fuck, Brad, you’re so ready to come, aren’t you? Is that for me? Did you have fun sucking me, is that it? Did you like it? Because I love it, you should let me. I’m so good, you could take notes.” Brad leans into his shoulder and closes his eyes, hips jerking upward.

“Keep talking,” Brad gasps, “please.” And Ray says, “Oh,” in a faint voice, and then he spills open, babbling, says, “Oh fuck, you like that, Brad? You do, Jesus, like my voice, don’t wanna stop my mouth with your cock, is that it? Oh god, you’re so—Brad, you fucking—never stop, I fucking love it, I’ll do anything you want, just let me.”

“Ray,” Brad says, sounding almost pained, and comes. Ray sucks his own fingers clean while Brad watches, wide-eyed and flushed. Brad’s going to give in eventually. Ray really is fucking great at sucking cock; Brad can’t hold out forever.

Ray flings himself on top of Brad after and rubs their noses together, marveling at Brad’s dazed, dopey smile, how Brad curls around him, content and rumbling faintly. Ray never wants to move again, unless it involves pressing kisses to Brad’s chest and throat and nose and chin.

“What are you doing?” Brad asks, sounding annoyed, but he’s got a tiny smile on his stupid, perfect face, and Ray’s too happy with the world to stop.

“You love me,” he announces, and sucks a red mark onto Brad’s collarbone, moves upward to kiss Brad’s jaw. Brad’s not the only possessive one around here, after all. “We should have been doing this years ago.”

“We could have been, except you’re an idiot,” Brad says sleepily, and bites Ray’s chin. Ray even likes that. His entire body has been tuned to Brad’s for years, and now anything Brad does is a stupidly huge turn on, ridiculous.

“But I’m your idiot,” Ray says cheerfully, and then decides that at some point, after they’re done basking, he needs to actually lever himself out of bed and get some coffee, and breakfast, and clothes. Maybe a bath, he is fucking filthy. And then they have to go check on Bravo, and take up Nate for a flight, and win a war. But Brad is being sweet and sleepy and charming, and Ray decides he’s going to keep him pinned to the bed for a while longer.

“Yes,” Brad says after an eternity laying tangled in the sheets has passed, voice muffled because he’s still got his face buried in Ray’s shoulder, “you are my idiot.” And Ray thinks, what the hell. Bravo can entertain Nate for one morning; Ray can be magnanimous about this. He flips them—Brad lets him, which is hotter than it should be—and presses Brad into the sheets.

“So, still angry with me?” he teases, mouthing down Brad’s chest, and when he looks up, Brad raises an eyebrow.

“I think I’ve found it in my heart to forgive you,” he says lowly, cupping the back of Ray’s skull in his palm, breathing unsteadily. Ray is delighted; he thinks Brad is getting hard again already, just from Ray winding his way down Brad’s chest, sucking kisses into the planes of his belly, his hips. “But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll do something to infuriate me again soon enough.”

“Damn straight, lieutenant,” Ray says, and sets about showing Brad what a real bout of fellatio feels like. He takes his time, sloppy and teasing and delirious with it, until Brad’s writhing and calling his name, and then he backs off and grins when Brad swears and makes a grab for him. But Ray’s got plans; Brad just needs to trust him, clearly. Brad scowls when Ray says this, starts to sit up, and then he freezes. Ray can’t help but moan, slicks himself up with his own fingers, works himself open while Brad watches, wide-eyed and biting his lower lip raw.

Then he slides down slowly onto Brad’s cock. The burn of it in his arse is fantastic, ungodly, lewdly hot, and this time he’s awake and alert and can appreciate the drag of every inch, the red flush on Brad’s chest and the way his mouth falls open, the tortured look on his face when he comes.

They collapse together in a sweaty, decidedly smelly heap afterwards. Ray wants to do it all over again, but he supposes they really should rejoin the real world at some point.

Plus, he loves sex and all, but he really, really needs a cup of coffee.

Later, after Bravo has squawked triumphantly and Poke has covered his ears with his hands and muttered about how he does _not want to know, ever, Christ, Person, shut up_ and Nate has given them both scandalized looks—Ray is totally going to look forward to fucking with this guy, now that he knows that Brad is spending all his free time staring at Ray’s arse and not Captain Fick’s mouth—after all that, they take off for some high speed flight maneuvers. Ray’s standing uncomfortably, shifting his weight from leg to leg, enjoying the ache of it. Brad finally wanders over and says smugly, “I see you blushing, Captain Person. What are you thinking of?”

“What do you think, Lieutenant?” Ray replies, entirely serious, happier than he’s ever been in his life, and Brad stares at him, gets a strange look on his face, like he’s watching a particularly complex pattern of signal flags being flashed before his eyes, and Ray’s delighted to see Brad go suddenly red and speechless, a tiny grin at the corner of his mouth. Fuck, Ray loves him.

“Glad to hear it, Captain,” Brad says finally, looking a little uncomfortable himself, like maybe his trousers have suddenly gotten a bit too tight. Ray can’t stop smiling, and when Brad smiles back, a tiny crooked thing, all for Ray, it’s like watching Bravo hatch again for the first time. And then his dragon takes a joyful, controlled spiral that brushes the nearby cliffs and sends Nate and the rest of the crew whooping ecstatically from behind them. There’s nothing they can’t do, Ray thinks, doesn’t care how soppy and naïve it is, because it’s true. He knows it, the way he knows the feel of the wind in his face and the sun on his skin.

The French had better watch their fucking backs, because Bravo and her men are on the move.

***

 

 

 

 

SPOILER FOR HISTORY: Napoleon loses. IN YOUR FACE, BONEY. Etc.

FIN

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Carrying Dangerous Goods](https://archiveofourown.org/works/423360) by [dodificus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodificus/pseuds/dodificus)




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